344 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [4] 



prises with any hope of success. Also, for the fishing trade in general 

 cities offer great and important advantages, for, in the first place, it will 

 be easier in a place having a population of from 8,000 to 10,000 or more 

 to unite men in measures for advancing the fishing trade than in a vil- 

 lage where, even if the population be as large, it is scattered along a 

 great extent of coast. Cities, moreover, possess greater facilities in the 

 matter of postal and telegraph service, better means of communication, 

 and thereby a better chance for disposing of the products of their fish- 

 eries. Another great advantage offered by cities are banks. The great 

 herring fisheries depend to a great extent on the circumstance that the 

 manufacturers of prepared fish have access to banks to manage their 

 financial transactions. They need some one to advance to them con- 

 siderable capital, and the banks can do this. Thus, in Scotland a con- 

 siderable portion of the fish are paid for, by way of an advance of caj)i- 

 tal, almost a year before they are ready for the market. Money is also 

 needed for buying material, for paying wages, for paying insurance, 

 &c. ; and when the sale of fish takes place these banks attend to the 

 collecting of the money. In Scotland, previous to recent changes, sales 

 were to a great extent made in such a manner that, after the herring 

 were shipped, the sender, by surrendering bills over the crown-stamped 

 herring, the insurance, and the freight, through the local bank, drew a 

 check on a London bank where the buyer had credit, and in that man- 

 ner got his money immediately. This manner of effecting sales made 

 it common for bankers to loan money on crown -stamped herring which 

 were consigned to some continental port, and this had the great advan- 

 tage for the Scotch herring-fisheries that they could quickly exchange 

 their fish for money, which otherwise would not have been possible. A 

 l)ank transacting such business, of course, besides its fees, has the ad- 

 vantage that the savings are placed in it, and the fishermen find this 

 more advantageous to themselves than to place the money in small 

 quantities here and there, as is often done on the coast of Sweden. 



In Bohuslan the scattering of the fishing trade, which dates far back, 

 has been the principal reason why the well-being of the population has 

 declined whenever a herring-fishery period came to a close, of which 

 we have a sad example from the year 1809, when the last herring period 

 ended. The population of a city will always find it easier in such a 

 crisis to turn to some other business. This becomes very evident when 

 we examine the state of affairs prevailing in Norway. There, too, the 

 herring have at different periods ceased to come, but as the fishing trade 

 was concentrated in cities like Bergen. Stavanger, &c., the population 

 found it easy to turn to some other employment, and even to other fish- 

 eries. Many of the persons engaged in the fisheries were enabled to 

 work their way into the shipping business ; and to this circumstance it 

 is principally owing that IsTorway at the present time has so large a 

 mercantile marine. 



