The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-09-14
crew resting in the meantime.

l crew resting In the meantime.
 Occasionally herring is thrown 1 aside. It is because it has been smoth-
 cred under water and therefore would
 boat up after being cured. A shac
 Keeps as well after dying under water
 as in the air When all the fish are
 landed the boats crew reloads the seine upon the boat, coiling it symmetrically
 layer upon layer, while the land crew ! rests. And so each day Is spent, be- gining Monday morning sometimes at 1 midnight, neverlater than 4, and last ing until night, no stop being made for regular meals. The alternate hours of leisure are used for that. The tides l two ebb and two flood each day, are | carefully watched, as upon them de- pends the exact direction in which the seine is taken out and the time for be- l ginning each morning. Coffee is to be | had for the asking at any hour, and a peep at their culinary department is | mos interesting. The three cooks will tell you that two wash boilers full of coffee, twenty-fiv loaves of bread, one and half bushels of potatoes and 11O pounds of fish are used for one meal; seventeen barrels of flour, 300 pounds of coffee and two tons of bacon during the season. The men are allowed no liquor, but plenty of substantial food and are paid about 80 cents a day. A windy day, when the water is rough, becomes a holiday. Then the one vice of the fishermen, that of gambling for chewing tobacco, is freely indulged in.
 Most of these men work year after year upon the same float, coming from oyster fisheries down the bay, some few from their winter quarters-the alms- house-and others from nowhere. The last, professional tramps, leave each May with good clothes and shoes, and bodies free from rum, only to show up the following March in the most filthy and pitiable condition. They must, however, represent the better element of hobodom to be willing to work for even a few weeks and come back year after year.
 They are not always to be depended upon, however, to stay throughout the whole season. When the feet of some Weary Willie grows tired of being so often wet and long for rusty roads. or the thought that upon being paid off he will own the price of many whiskeys demoralizes him, he turns into his bunk sick and the men enjoy the joke. The crews jester builds up a little grave in the box of sand, marked by his name, and before the witty re- marks are exhausted the weary worker has been paid off and sent ashore by the tug.
 This year there were seven floats in operation within distance of eight and a half miles, representing an av craze of 100000 fish caught by each, or 70, ,00O0 GOO in all taken from the Sus- quehanna flats in five weeks. Most of them are herring, which are salted and sold, largely in the South. A limit of 5000 barrels Is placed by law upon each packer.
 The shad are not caught in such large numbers, for they do not swim much with the herring. The gillers catch a good many, the United States Fish at Havre de Grace paying them 25 cents for each ripe shad spawn These are used at the matching station. Most of the shad, whether caught in a seine or gill net, are shiped to phila- 1elphia. New York consumes all the
 
 rock, having a buyer stationed at Havre de Grace during the fishing seq son. Rock are sold by the pound.
 While aboard the float one imagines It half wharf half ship. When she sa | utes a passing craft or answers a sa- | ute she Is a vessel; when one walks | down Night Owls avenue" it is lit- | tie townlet on bank that he passes 1 through. Not until the strange craft | Is back in Havre de Grace does 1t ap- | pear as it is-a raft bearing the sleep | ng, eating and working apartments of l , large crowd of workmen-a fishing l settlement riding the waves. the build | ng of which cost s6 6,000 an artificial is- |, and of the greatest commercial inn upon which Is carried on one # the liveliest of the nations multi arious industries-W Washington Even- np Star