746 HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 
The average running outfit of each cannery is rather more than $30,000. The total amount 
of capital invested in the canneries is therefore from $900,000 to $1,000,000. 
APPARATUS AND METHODS OF CAPTURE.—Each cannery is provided with some forty to fifty 
boats, which they rent to the fishermen. Very few fishermen—not fifty in all—have their own 
boats. 
These boats are mostly made in San Francisco, but as they can be made in Astoria somewhat 
more cheaply than they can be bought in San Francisco, some of the canneries are having them 
made in their own establishments. They can be built in Astoria for $175, without paint or rigging; 
painted and rigged they are worth about $225. The boats are sloop-rigged, with flat bottom and 
center-board, and usually without deck. The chief danger which the Columbia River fishermen 
run is getting into the rough water on the bar. The breakers then turn the boats end over end 
and a deck would not prevent it. 
The salmon are caught chiefly by means of gill-nets, although seines are used by some fish- 
ermen in the latter part of the season, when young fish of from 8 to 10 pounds are in the river. 
The young salmon count the same as the blue-back at the canneries, i. é., four and a half count as 
one quinnat. 
The gill-nets used are mostly made for the canneries by the fishermen. Some of the canneries 
employ a few fishermen to work for them during the winter, and repair their old nets and knit new 
ones. The nets average from 200 to 300 fathoms long and from 40 to 45 feet deep; mesh, 84 inches. 
It takes about 170 pounds of twine to make a net, the twine worth about $1.10 per pound. Fish- 
ermen are paid 20 cents a fathom for knitting nets. The nets are worth about $300 to $400. There 
are two men and one net to each boat. 
As competition between the canneries becomes more close the nets are being yearly increased 
in length. Formerly the nets were furnished by the fishermen, but now very rarely. The chief 
reason for this is that the custom of home canneries of taking fish and asking no questions as to 
how they were obtained led to the stealing of nets, and no fisherman could afford to run the risk 
of having his net stolen. When a net is cut loose from the buoys and ropes it cannot be identified. 
When a fisherman has his own net he seldom “catches a steamboat in it.” Fishermen working 
cannery nets often have them run into by steamers. 
Most of the canneries keep an extra supply of nets constantly on hand, so that in the height 
of the season no boat need lie idle when a net is lost. 
The number of boats on the river has been much increased in the last three years. Some firms 
thought that by doubling the number of boats the profits would be correspondingly doubled. 
Other firms had to increase their number similarly, and the result is that ‘the average of fish per 
boat is greatly decreased. There is hardly room on the river for so many to fish at once. A hun- 
dred salmon boats may be counted at almost any time in sight at Astoria. No one cannery can, 
however, afford to reduce unless all the others should do so. The following record of the catch of 
Badollet & Co. will show the decrease in the average per boat with the increase of boats: 
_ 
1876 1877 1878 1879 
(18 boats). (40 boats). (45 boats). (45 boats). 
April .......0....e.c00 1, 015 1, 830 5, 216 9, 407 
a 19, 165 17, 825 27, 728 31, 668 
Tune....2.0.2..se essen 30, 661 19, 474 22, 781 25, 119 
Daly s-cccsces dew vse 33, 900 21,081] . 31, 735 31, 904 
Total ........2.065 84, 741 60, 210 8Y, 455 98, 098 
Average per boat. 4, 652 1, 505 1, 943 2,179 
