The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1904-06-27
WHALING ALMOST EXTINCT.
Decline of an Industry That Was
Once Important.

Whalebone is selling at $3.50 a pound
and yet the whaling industry is dying.
Tt is a curious, almost an incredible
situation, and yet it is the situation.
Whaling, the most picturesque, and at
one time the most extensive of Ameri-
can maritime industries, which built UP
and supported half dozen Of the most
hourishing New Endland towns OF 40 or
80 years ago, viii soon be extinct as an
industry, and is never likely to become
popular as a sport; and yet it was ca
bled from London a week or two ago
that Two and a quarter tons of whale
bone had sold there at $4,000 a ton.
and that there only remained on the
market in all the world about four tons
of whalebone- So that it is likely TO be
going higher yet.
At present the entire whaling bust
ness OF this country and that means
practically of the world, is in the hands
OF the Pacific Steam Whaling company,
with headquarters at San Francisco
and agencies in the east. E K. Austin
the New York agent, grew Up in the
business, practically inheriting it from
his father, who has been in it for half
a century and knows it from A to z.
Speaking of the present scarcity of
whalebone. the elder Austin said:
This years crop does not exceed
$4,000 pounds all told. 1t IS almost a
famine. During the last ten years the
harvest has run from 10000 to 300 coo
pounds; and even that was Il tremend-
Gus falling off from the old days. Why,
we used to expect as matter OF course
from 100000 to 100000 pounds as the
result OF the years catch. In those
days whalebone was perhaps 70 cents a
pound Now it's $3.50 a pound here,
and about 81 on the other side.
mo, that doesn't mean the revival
Of the whaling industry. I wish it did.
But the whaling industry is dead-nOt
in a trance, but dead-or, at any rate.
dying fast, and beyond the possibility
If r-asrr Il W. I'D
the whale was chiefly valuabl for his
oil. Practically he supplied the worlds
light. But the world has found SO
many other ways of getting light,
cheaper light and better light, that the
days of sperm whaling are well past.
Gas and electricity killed that business.
And now whalebone-which caters
purely to feminine vanity-is the only
prop left to a once great industry.
Whale Ola different thing from sperm
Oils still used to some extent in the
rapidly being supplanted by menhaden oil,
which Is much cheaper and can be OBJ
the last decade has sold at 81 a gallon It
now sells when it sells at 80 cents. and
there IS little demand for 1t even at that
cheaper vet. We used to run big distil-
leries out in San Francisco, but we've
given up that branch OF the business en-
tirely to the bone. The demand for the
oil was not sufficient to pay for its re-
why doesn't whalebone, whoIesaling at
Sc so a pound. mean a revival of the whal-
ing Industry Because it costs too close
to $3.50 a pound to get it to market.
Whaling nowadays is not what it was.
Whalers are not sailing vessels of as
sorted sizes and rig and mongrel crews.
They are big, strongly built steamers,
built particularly with a view to with
standing the pressure of ice Such a
vessel costs about $4,000 TO build. and
about $4,000 to equip for cruise. 1t
may be out for year or two and come
back without having more than seen a
whale. Then, again, II may be out only
a month or two and get caught in the
ice. Last season we lost two of our YES
sells that way.
1.-THE whaling grounds are ever so much
farther north nowadays than they were
right whale that yields bone. not the
sperm whale, which was formerly hunted
for its oil. The bone, as you know is
not bone, but approximately it is teeth
the right whale that acts a sieve
prevents anything too big from going
down. Each Whalebone is long and fiat,
tapering to a point. and near the point
horsehair, but it is really fiber OF the
'bone'-if one may use such express
sion, considering that the bone IS not
hbrOus, real bone. at least The right
pared with other species, and he is even
less SO now than formerly. at least
he's less so in accessible waters. though
one of our captains who was here 4 day
there were just many of them as ever,
but that the years of hot pursuit when
the industry was at its height had driven
them all to the inaccessible waters
but not so fOOlish-educated by adversely,
as it We're Brooklyn Eagle.
$4,000.