THE STORY OF THE SALMON FISHERIES
To compare the production of a small but old country like Great Britain
with the production of a large but new country like Canada is to find
oneself confronted by comic statistics. For a beginner, the daughter is
doing very well with her large farm of nearly four million square miles;
but the mother is doing so much better with her mere potato patch of
121,000 square miles, that the two sets of results, when placed side by
side, almost smack of Gilbert and Sullivan.
True, the daughter has got ahead in wheat-growing, and also in timber
(the old lady, in the latter case, having allowed her stock to run low).
But in other matters the result is controlled by the greater number of
hands at work on the potato patch. In comparing the results achieved by
forty-five million people in a little country, with the results achieved
by eight million people in a large country, we perceive what the
political economist means when he says wealth is labour. In the making
of wealth, natural resources are necessary. They are the bases on which
human effort builds. But natural resources without population are of no
immediate value. To the starving, isolated man half a dozen penny
saveloys would be greater riches than a mountain of gold.
[Illustration: GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS, VICTORIA, B.C.]
[Illustration: TOURISTS IN VANCOUVER CITY, B.C.]
According to the most recent reliable figures accessible to me at the
moment of writing, the fisheries of England and Wales (leaving Scotland
and Ireland out of the reckoning) represent a greater annual money value
than the fisheries of Canada—a fact that assumes considerable
significance in the light of two other facts, namely, (1) that the
fisheries of Great Britain have been severely depleted, and (2) that the
fisheries of Canada are the largest and most prolific in the world.
Great Britain, it will be noted, is the richer in caught fish; Canada is
the richer in uncaught fish. In other words, Canada has more fish than
Great Britain, but Great Britain has more fishermen than Canada.
The remarkable results secured by the old lady—to revert to the
personal metaphor—are due to a comprehensive thoroughness of effort.
Her luggers go in fleets to all the sandbanks—their trawls search each
estuary that is likely to harbour a pair of soles or a pint of shrimps.
At low tide the old lady examines her mud shores for every wet and
glistening periwinkle.
The daughter is not in a position to do that. Her staff of helpers is
wholly inadequate to cope with all the occupations and opportunities
that crowd upon her. With so many fisheries available, the only ones
that get attended to are those that shout for notice. The fish would not
get caught unless they practically insisted upon it. British Columbia
salmon assemble in such myriads in certain of the rivers that their
protruding backs, at times, make a dense mat of fish from shore to
shore, almost hiding the water. That statement may look like an
exaggeration to the Englishman accustomed to angle all day and secure,
peradventure, a couple of small roach as the reward of his patient
industry. But the statement describes an actual, familiar sight; and,
indeed, the natural resources of Canada scarcely lend themselves to
exaggeration. Again and again I have seen and heard those natural
resources not over-stated, but ludicrously under-stated. The mistake is
constantly made, if quite unintentionally, by Canadians themselves.
Let me give another instance of a Canadian fish that assembles in force,
refusing to be overlooked. I refer to the humble herring. “In 1903”—to
quote unimpeachable testimony—“the run of herring was very large. At
Nanaimo the fish invaded the harbour in such numbers that thousands were
washed up on the beach, like seaweed, by the waves created by passing
steamers.”
As a matter of fact, the waters of British Columbia are alive with
halibut, cod, flounders, anchovies, whales, sardines, shad, oysters,
clams, crabs, seals, prawns, and other useful creatures that are more or
less neglected by a sparse and preoccupied human population. One of the
few fish that happens to receive careful, not to say minute, attention
in British Columbia is the sturgeon. It is caught, esteemed, and, as I
am officially informed, subdivided into commercial uses according to the
following classification:—(1) caviare; (2) isinglass, made from the
swim bladder; (3) the flesh—fresh, salted, smoked, or otherwise
prepared; (4) oil, which is of great value in the leather industry; (5)
fertiliser, made from entrails and scrap; (6) the soft, gristly
backbone, with its sheath, which, prepared, is called wesiga, and in
Russia is a popular article of diet; (7) the brain and nerve cord,
which, when smoked and dried, is considered a great delicacy in China;
(8) the back portion of the sturgeon, or dorsal region, is made into
balyki; (9) the ventral part, or belly, of the fish is utilised as a
food called pupki; (10) a valuable glue, differing from the isinglass of
the swim bladder, is derived from the nose, fins, tail, etc.; and,
lastly (11), leather is made from the tough and dense skin. Thus there
is apparently no waste in the case of this all-round fish.
With regard to the famous British Columbia salmon, the first fact to be
noted is that they are not salmon. They are very like salmon, and they
are as good as salmon, if not better; but they do not belong to the
genus. In thinking otherwise the pioneer population of British Columbia
made one of those little mistakes that are natural and excusable in the
excitement of occupying a new country. The fish in question belong, as a
matter of fact, to the genus oncorhynchus, of which there are five
species, all represented in British Columbian waters—the sockeye, the
spring, the coho, the dog, and the humpback. When a mistake of this sort
has a sufficiently long start, the correction cannot overtake it. The
fish that are not salmon are now recognised as salmon all over the
world. Were you to ask your grocer for “a tin of oncorhynchus,” you
would probably make him jump.
Another fact has to be noted in connection with the great so-called
salmon industry. Its historian has not yet put in an appearance. I made
that disappointing discovery while talking with Mr. W. H. Barker,
president of the British Columbia Packers’ Association, than whom, I had
been assured, no man in Canada knows more about the catching and canning
of oncorhynchus.
“It certainly would make an interesting book,” said Mr. Barker
thoughtfully, “but that book has not been written.”
“You ought to write it,” his visitor pointed out.
“I’m much too busy,” Mr. Barker declared.
“Well, do please spare just one hour for the purpose now,” was my
appeal; and getting ready a notebook, I explained that my shorthand
would probably be a match for his conversational speed.
“To start at the beginning, then,” said Mr. Barker, courteously falling
in with this scheme for imparting reliable information to the reading
public, “you must know that the pioneer was William Hume, who came from
the State of Maine, where his father, a Scotsman, was a fisherman on the
Kennebec River. In the early ’sixties William Hume, probably as a result
of the gold excitement, migrated to California, where he located on the
Sacramento River, and engaged in hunting and fishing.
“An interesting memory of those days has to do with an extraordinary gun
that had been specially made for him. It was of unusually large bore,
and it took a very heavy charge of powder—altogether an extremely
effective weapon against ducks and geese, of which Hume and his partner
shot a great many. But one slight drawback to this gun was that it
‘kicked’ pretty badly, and its owner was always very careful before
firing it to protect himself with a thick shoulder-pad. Well, one day
Hume went off with a wagon-load of birds for the market, leaving his
partner in the shack laid up with rheumatism. It seems that the invalid
came limping out into the air, and happened to see a flock of geese.
Without a second thought, he took up Hume’s gun, quite forgetting about
the shoulder-pad and equally forgetting his own infirm condition. He
fired. How many geese he killed I don’t know, but he himself was knocked
sprawling, and on picking himself up he made the delightful discovery
that the rheumatism had completely left him! I have seen that gun in a
museum. It certainly looks formidable enough to ‘kick’ an unwary
marksman off his feet. As to the rest of the story, I merely repeat what
I heard.
“William Hume caught more salmon than he could dispose of—which
unsatisfactory state of affairs he discussed with a man he had known in
Maine. This was Mr. Hapgood; and the upshot of their deliberations was
that they jointly set to work, with make-shift arrangements, to pack
salmon in tins on a scow on the Sacramento River. Such was the beginning
of the canning industry that has since assumed such gigantic
proportions.
“In the following year Hume and Hapgood migrated to the Columbia River,
locating themselves on the Washington side, about forty miles above
Astoria. There they started a cannery, packing four thousand cases the
first season, the fish being put up in one-pound tins 4½ inches high.
They had great difficulty at first in finding a market. A good deal went
to Australia and to San Francisco, and the price realised was twelve
dollars a case. The demand grew rapidly; other canneries were opened;
and Hume’s brothers came out from Maine to go into the business. The
brothers were George W. Hume (who is still alive, and a very wealthy
man), R. D. Hume, and Joe Hume. Each started a cannery of his own; and
R. D. Hume’s “Crown” brand came to be very well known in the old
country.
“Everything was extremely crude at first. The cans were imperfectly
packed, and many had to be thrown away. In those days all the processes
were done by hand, whereas now, of course, machinery operates
throughout.
“The Humes were practical fishermen. As a boy I worked for one of the
brothers, and so I am able to speak from personal knowledge. The fish
were, and still are, caught in what are called ‘gill nets.’ These are
made from a linen thread known as shoe thread. We used to make the nets
ourselves, spinning the twine and using from seven to twelve strands,
which we twisted up lightly. With weights at the bottom to keep them
down, the nets hang from cotton lines attached to cedar floats. They
drift with the tide, and the fish, swimming up the river, thrust their
heads into the meshes and then cannot extricate themselves, owing to the
twine catching in their gills.
“The fishing is rather hazardous. It takes place at the mouth of the
river, off the sand spits, where the water is usually in great
commotion. Very good boats are used, but they are often capsized, a
number of fishermen being drowned every year. Each boat carries two
hands—the net man, or captain, and the boat puller. It is nothing
unusual for a boat to capture in one night from two to three hundred
large fish varying in weight from 25 lb. to 28 lb. This is the fish that
is known on the Fraser River as the ‘spring,’ on the Columbia River as
the ‘chinook,’ and in Alaska as the ‘king.’
“In 1876 Alexander Ewan started below New Westminster to can the salmon
of the Fraser River. These are a different variety, their local name
being the ‘sockeye.’ They are without doubt the finest of all salmon for
canning, being of a uniform red colour and having red oil. Their flavour
is even better when they are canned than when they are eaten
newly-caught. The sockeye is much smaller than the spring, running to a
uniform weight of six or seven pounds. On the Fraser River, therefore,
the fishermen use a smaller net, made of finer thread, only five or six
ply, the mesh being six inches instead of nine.
“Such was the success of the first cannery on the Fraser that fifty have
since been erected between New Westminster and the Gulf of Georgia. The
season’s pack on the Fraser has been as high as one million cases, each
case containing 48 lb. of salmon. One million cases would contain from
twelve to fourteen million fish.”
Mr. Barker then referred to the illusory fears some persons in the Old
Country have entertained on the subject of tinned salmon: “There have,”
he said, “been instances of ptomaine poisoning in connection with
various animal foods, including canned fish. But it has been proved on
incontrovertible evidence, and to the satisfaction of the highest
scientific and medical authorities, that canned fish is absolutely
innocuous, and very wholesome, when eaten fresh. The process of canning
it sterilises it. Ptomaine poisoning is caused by the prolonged action
of the air on food that has been hermetically sealed, such as
shell-fish, sausages, and canned or bottled foods. We have paid a lot of
money to find that out. I will give you a typical instance—a case of
poisoning in New Haven, Connecticut. We engaged one of the leading
doctors of the New York Health Department to go there and investigate
the circumstances. He found that when the tin was opened—in the middle
of July, with the thermometer at nearly 100°—only a small part of the
fish was eaten. The rest was left in the tin, and was not consumed until
three days later, when this stale food caused one child to die and made
two or three others sick. Cases investigated in Chicago and other parts
of the United States have had a similar history. Canned salmon should be
used only on the day the tin is opened.”
I asked Mr. Barker to describe the processes to which the fish is
subjected in the cannery.
“In the first place,” he explained, “a machine takes off the heads,
tails and fins, splits the fish open, and removes the entrails, then
brushes and washes the fish inside and out. One machine will deal with
twenty-five thousand salmon in a day. Afterwards they go into another
apparatus, where they are scraped thoroughly with a knife, while fresh,
clean cold water is running on them. Next they go into a bath of water,
where they are scrubbed thoroughly with a brush made to fit the fish.
Afterwards they are deposited on a revolving frame and cut into slices,
which exactly fit the tins, into which they are subsequently inserted
with a small quantity of fine Liverpool salt. The filled tins travel on
a belt to automatic scales, which throw out any that are light weight,
the others proceeding on to a machine which, having closed each tin,
cleans the outside with hot water and steam. The lids are now crimped to
impart strength, and then the tins are run through a flux and rolled
through the hot solder, which sets on a subsequent journey along a
twenty-foot belt, the process being assisted by a jet of water. A stay
in the coolers is followed by a hot-water test for defective soldering,
after which the cans are conveyed to the retorts and cooked, under
pressure of steam, for from half an hour to three-quarters. On leaving
the retorts they are vented—that is, a hole is opened in the can to
allow gases to escape. A drop of solder having been dropped on that
hole, there is a second cooking process, to soften the bones and
sterilise any air that may remain in the tin. Finally the tin is washed,
lacquered (to prevent rusting), and labelled.”
[Illustration: A SALMON CANNERY ON FRASER RIVER]
[Illustration: CHINESE QUARTER, VANCOUVER. B.C.]
“You have some very clever machinery,” I remarked.
“Yes,” agreed Mr. Barker. “But it is all going to be altered in the near
future. The new way of canning does away with soldering, the lids being
fixed by crimping—that is, by overlapping the joined edges with such
exactitude that the junction is absolutely airtight. This year” (1910)
“much of the California fruit is being packed that way. Why the
innovation affected that industry before it reached the salmon canneries
is easily explained. The heat of the soldering copper was apt to candy
the sugar in the syrup, making it dark and sometimes causing black
specks, which looked like dirt, to settle on the fruit.”
“Does soldering involve any similar disadvantage in the case of salmon?”
“No. But soldering necessitates skilled labour, while crimping is done
by machinery. That is why we are compelled to make the change, which
will put the canneries to very heavy capital expenditure. Skilled labour
is becoming scarce and very dear. We have a great many Orientals in the
canneries. Chinamen are most reliable and painstaking: they are good
mechanics, they don’t strike, they don’t get drunk, and they are
specially adapted for the work that has to be done in a cannery.
Previously their labour was cheap, but now that the Government has
imposed a head tax of five hundred dollars on every Chinaman who comes
into the country, their labour has become dear. One reason why the work
does not attract English labour is because it is not constant. The heavy
part of it occurs from July 20th to August 25th, though, of course, the
making of the cans takes place before then.
“I well remember when the Chinese first started. I worked then for a man
named John West, who had a little cannery on the Columbia River. George
W. Hume was the first man who hired Chinamen. He was forced to do so
because of the lack of white labour and the unreliability of what he did
get. In order to keep sixty or seventy men for two or three months he
had to engage from three hundred and fifty to four hundred, because they
kept leaving, and they were constantly getting drunk or striking. They
were largely runaway sailors and men of that class, who just drifted
around, earning a few dollars here and a few dollars there.”
“You took your share,” I suggested, “of the actual practical work?”
“Oh, yes,” said the president of the Packers’ Association. “Besides
making nets, I fished and lent a hand in all departments.”
“No doubt,” I further suggested, “there were some interesting human
characters in the salmon fisheries in those days?”
“There was Lighthouse Sam for one,” Mr. Barker answered. “They called
him that because he had once worked in a lighthouse. He was the most
reckless man I have ever known, and always getting into trouble. Again
and again his boat was capsized and several of his partners were
drowned; but Lighthouse Sam seemed to have a charmed life. I well
remember the day when one of our men came running in—it was Phil
Williams, from Orkney Island—and shouted: ‘Lighthouse Sam is gone at
last!’ Then he told us that the poor fellow’s boat was pitching about,
bottom-up, in the breakers, and that both hands were drowned. It seemed
that he had left two men trying to rescue the boat—which they did not
succeed in doing until an hour afterwards. Then they made an amazing
discovery. Lighthouse Sam was underneath, and, although exhausted, quite
unharmed, there having been enough air in the bottom of the boat to keep
him alive. His mate, as usual, was drowned. After that, I am sorry to
say, Lighthouse Sam took to drink, and in the following year he stole a
boat, and, securing a partner, sailed up the Pacific coast to do a
little fishing on his own account in Shoal Water Bay. The wind blew
strongly from the south-east; they were in danger of being swamped, and
the reckless mariner headed straight for the shore, undeterred by the
sight of heavy breakers. The boat was smashed to pieces, the partner was
duly drowned, but Lighthouse Sam got safely ashore. After that he was
put into the penitentiary for stealing the boat, and I lost sight of
him.
“By the by, Lighthouse Sam was not the only salmon fisherman who
survived a cruise with his upturned boat on top of him. A man named
Harriman was capsized at the mouth of the Columbia River one Friday at
midnight, and when his craft was recovered, on the Monday afternoon, the
poor fellow and his boat were high and dry on the beach. He was
uninjured—in fact, was soon feeling quite fit again, and, so far as I
know, he is fishing there to this day.
“Among the fishermen are a lot of English, Scotch, and Irish, and some
of the very best are Norwegians and Danes. There are also many Italians
and Greeks. On the Columbia River the boats and nets belong to the
fishermen, while here on the Fraser the canneries own all the vessels
and gear. The pay is very good while the work lasts, varying from 150 to
350 dollars for a month and a half or two months.
“Last year,” said Mr. Barker, referring to 1909, “the pack was the
highest in the history of the business, and amounted to 5,340,000 cases.
It was all readily sold. The consumption of tinned salmon in this
country is increasing, of course, with the rapid growth of population.
Then, too, the English market is again brisk, while we find it
impossible to keep pace with the demand from New Zealand and Australia,
where the salmon does not occur. This year we could have sold five and a
half million cases, but the pack only reached a little over four
millions. You may be surprised to note the difference in the quantity
caught and canned in 1909 and the quantity caught and canned in 1910.
But that was a normal and expected difference. The year 1901 witnessed a
tremendous run of salmon, as did the year 1905. There will be another
great supply of fish in 1913. It occurs every fourth year with such
absolute regularity that we prepare for it by making an extra number of
tins. Moreover, new canneries are always set up in the recurring ‘fat’
year, which is invariably followed by a ‘thin’ year. The life history of
the salmon—from the time spawn is laid in the river to the return into
that river of the full-grown fish—is four years; and it is natural,
therefore, that the productiveness of each year should be echoed, as it
were, in the fourth following year, and in each succeeding fourth year.
That may or may not be the explanation. Some people, indeed, seek to
identify the recurring ‘fat’ year and ‘lean’ year with a corresponding
variation in the rainfall. But whatever the cause, it is constant and
can be depended upon.
“Apart from that fluctuation in the available quantity of salmon, the
supply of fish of almost all sorts on the Pacific coast is beyond
anyone’s power to gauge. I have seen 35,000 salmon caught in one haul of
a seine net. That was in Alaska, where the bulk of the salmon are
caught. There is, of course, a tendency for that fish to retire before
the advance of a human population. Pollution of the rivers is the actual
cause of that retirement, and in British Columbia pollution takes the
form of sawdust from the lumber industry. Here, then, we touch the
reason why, in my opinion, the Fraser must rank as the finest salmon
river in the world. You simply cannot pollute the Fraser.”