Photo from Dr. Hugh M. Smith 



. A MILLION COD he;ads rlady To be; mads into commercial fe;rtilize;r 



"Step by step every new idea of art and science has been brought to the aid of the 

 fisherfolk of the North Sea, and by the same step-by-step process the annual drain on its 

 resources has cHmbed higher and higher, until finally, during the year previous to the present 

 war, it amounted to a million and a quarter tons of fish. Counting two tons to the truck- 

 load and allowing 30 feet to the truck, this would make a procession of fish trucks reaching 

 across the United States from New York to San Francisco via New Orleans. Yet almost 

 as rapidly as the demands of the world have risen, the supply has increased, and, except for 

 a too heavy concentration of fishing forces on some individual bank now and then, there is 

 no evidence of any serious depletion of the stock" (see text, page 141). 



standpoint, as do also Sweden, Xorway, 

 and Denmark. On the other hand, it hits 

 Switzerland more from a consumption 

 standpoint. That country normally buys 

 nearly a million dollars' worth of fish 

 from the countries that border the North 

 Sea. 



Many regions around the North Sea 

 live almost entirely by their fishing in- 

 dustry. The Orkneys and the Shetland 

 Islands have almost no other activities. 

 Lerwick, the principal town of these 

 islands, in winter has a population of 

 4,000. In summer this grows to 19,000 

 and everybody is busy with the fisheries. 

 Where the little Scotch town of Buckie 

 possessed three steam fishing boats in 

 1910, it possessed 150 in 1914. The port 

 of Fraserburg annually handles 100,000 



tons of fish, and Aberdeen has increased 

 her fishing business sixty fold in 14 years. 



the; world's fishing capital 



In Great Britain the fishing industry 

 is centralized in a few large ports ; in 

 France it is scattered among a great many 

 small ports. Grimsby is the fishing cap- 

 ital of the world, wnth an annual output 

 of perhaps 300,000 tons of fish. There 

 one encounters a more feverish excite- 

 ment than anything he may witness in 

 the great stockyards district of Chicago. 

 A hundred trawlers, their great bins full 

 to overflowing with their latest catch, 

 draw up to the fish dock in the order of 

 their arrival in port, and a swarming 

 army of fishermen, porters, criers, dock- 

 ers, and packers set up an uproar which 



145 



