Pacific Co-Operative Halibut Pool Being Organized
By Charles Folsom
One of the most important,
most business-like propositions
ever before launched on this
coast is now being presented to
the American halibut vessel
owners and fishermen for their
consideration. Every conceiv
able kind of scheme for im
proving conditions in our fish
eries has come forward from
time to time in the past, but
for various reasons these have
never been practicable, or con
ditions prevented their being
successfully carried out. Today,
with our laws up-to-date and
designated to give the producers
in our basic industries every op
portunity to benefit from their ef
forts, the halibut fishermen of
this coast are being asked to
carefully consider the possibil
ities of a Co-operative Market
ing Pool in order that com
petition may be controlled and
an equitable and efficient dis
tribution of the produce of
these waters attained.
rish are not protected by
copyright, trademark or patent
and because they are not pro
tected in any way commercially,
every Tom, Dick or Harry can
catch, or buy, and sell fish in
any manner he cares to as
sume. The result has been well
pointed out by Mrs. Evelene
Spencer, formerly Fish Cookery
expert with the Bureau of Fish
eries at Washington, and now
with the National Fish Co’y of
Halifax when she said, “I have
seen so many dirty, smelly fish
markets all over the country
that I do not wonder more
fish is not sold but marvel that
women buy it under these con
ditions when the adverse ad
vertising fish gets in these
localities must be incalculable.”
It must not be imagined that
these are the small, secluded
markets in out of the way
places. She takes the public
market in City of Washington
as an example where fish are
exposed to flies and high tem
peratures. As conditions exist
there, no control can be ex
ercised by the trade over those
responsible. But a halibut pool
of this coast could tell those
responsible that if they did
not clean up and present their
product in a suitable manner
they could handle no more
halibut. They might of course
obtain small and irregular
quantities from the North At
lantic coast, but this is hardly
likely as practically all this is
consumed in the New England
States.
But this inefficiency exists
not only in our retail markets
but in the large wholesale
markets as well. Few people
out side our fisheries know that
the largest market on the con
tinent is a hundred years be
hind the times. It has no rail
connections with any freight or
express terminals in the city;
practically all fish arriving
there (in the year 1924, 344,
000,000 pounds out of a total
of 394, 000,000) is handled by
trucks. Traffic congestion in
the city is so bad that most of
this trucking is done by teams,
speed with motor trucks being
impossible and therefore more
costly than by horses, and in
order to avoid this congestion
this trucking is done at night.
Cars of fish arriving in the
Metropolis in the early morn
ing cannot be promptly han
dled to the market and usually
have to lay until evening and
sold the following day. These
conditions prevail at the cele
brated Fulton market and Peck
blip, on bouth btreet, rslew
York City. Approximately an
eighth of the fish handled here
is landed direct from fishing
vessels, but to seek the avenues
of consumption this fish must
pass thru crowded metropolitan
area at tremedous expense to
the consumer and loss to the
producer.
In 1924 it cost the consumer
and the producer $644,000 dol
lars to have this fish hauled
from the rails to the markets.
This is approximately 20 cents
per hundred pounds or two
percent of the wholesale value
of the fishery products sold in
that year. An additional burd
en is then placed upon the con
sumer and the producer for
large quantities that are re
shipped from this market to
points out side the city. This
approximates 20 percent of the
fish handled and involved, in
1924, something like $150,000
truck charges. Large quantities
of Pacific Halibut are shipped
into this market, which has a
big influence upon the markets
of the country, where it must
suffer congestion, duplication
and loss. Were the fishermen
of this coast so organized as
to control the distribution of
their product, they could ignore
such outrageous conditions,
present a decent fish for the
consumer to eat without addi
tional cost to him, and reap a
benefit from a large portion of
three quarters of a million dol
lars squandered in unnecessary
handling.
And it should not be imagin
ed that there is not room for
expanding the fish markets of
the country, or creating new
markets altogether. The Big
Co-ops handling such univer
sally used commodities as fruits,
raisins, walnuts, pecans, cotton
and tobacco are doing this,
showing that the possibilities
for expanding the fisheries, the
percapita consumption of which
is very small, are limitless.
Of nearly four hundred mil
lion pounds of fish shipped in
to New York from all over the
continent in a year, four-fifths
is consumed within the Metro
politan area within a radius of
nineteen miles from Fulton
Market. This apparently heavy
consumption of fish for the
8,500,000 people there amounts
to only a percapita consump
tion of six-tenths of a pound a
week, or only sufficient for
their Friday’s dinner. It might
be said that they only eat fish
once a week. Fish! the best