SEA-FISHERIES LABORATORY. 75 



duction," and the failure to materialise of most of the new 

 flotations did much to dispel the illusion of prosperity. The 

 lowest earnings of Fleetwood skippers, I was informed, was 

 £17 a week, and the double of that was not uncommon. At 

 one port the lowest ratings on a steam-trawler had a weekly 

 wage of £2, a daily bonus, while at sea, of 6/-, a share of 2d. 

 in the £ on the earnings of the vessel, and free food while on 

 board and fishing. I don't think these earnings, either of skip- 

 pers or deck-hands were too big when one considers what is 

 the nature of the work that is done, and I only quote the figures 

 here as illustrating some of the costs of landing the fish. Coal, 

 ice, and other consumable stores, had, it must be remembered, 

 increased in cost in much about the same ratio as wages and 

 bonuses. In June of 1920 a series of average costings taken 

 at several fishing ports showed that it took about 4Jd. to land 

 the average lb. of fish, while the latter sold at about 1 Jd. to 4Jd. 

 Far more serious, however, was the incredibly bad means of 

 transport and distribution. When one compares the price 

 obtained for the fish on landing with the price at which it was 

 bought by the consumer in the retail fish shops it becomes 

 evident that an extraordinarily large proportion of the latter 

 price must have been absorbed by the expense of carrying 

 away the fish from the ports and distributing it to the con- 

 sumers, for it is probable that the retailers' profits were not 

 enhanced in the same ratio as was that of the price paid by the 

 consumers. Even the pre-war transport was far from being 

 all that was desirable, and certainly that of the years 1919 

 and 1920 was very much worse — so one heard repeatedly of large 

 quantities of fish that were unsaleable and had to be destroyed. 

 There were " gluts " at many of the ports, and there was no 

 means of utilising these except the manure factory. The cold- 

 storage, about which one heard so much during the war years, 

 and in regard to which there was so much unfinished scientific 

 investigation, did not materialise. It appears now to be the 



