Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-06-11
WHALING ALMOST EXTINCT.
Decline Of an Industry That Was Once
Important.

Important.
From the Brooklyn Eagle.
Whalebone is selling at $3.50 pound.
and yet the whaling industry is dying. 1t
Is a curious. almost an incredible situa-
ton, and yet it is the situation. Whaling,
the most picturesque, and at one time the
most extensive of American maritime in
dustries,. which built up and supported half
dozen of the most fourishing New Eng
land towns of forty or fifty years ago, will
soon be extinct as an industry and is never
likely to become popular as a sport and
yet it was cabled from London a week or
two ago that two and a quarter tons of
WhaIebone had sold there at f3 900 ton,
and that there only remained on the mar
ket in all the world about four tons of
wha!ebone. SO that it is likely to be 60
ing higher yet.
AT present the entire whaling business of
this country, and that means practically of
the world. Is In the hands of the Pacific
Steam Whaling Company, with headquar-
tiers at San Francisco and agencies in the
east. E. K. Austin. the New York agent,
grew up in the business, practically inner
lting 1t from his father, who has been in
IL Tor half century and knows it from
to q.
Speaking of the present scarcity of whale
bone, the elder Austin said: .
This years crop does not exceed 30 OOU
pounds all told. 1t is almost famine
During the last ten Years the harvest has
ran from 10000 to 100000 pounds; and
even that was a tremendous falling off
from the old days Why, we used to ex-
pect as matter Of course from 100000 to
LOCO 600 pounds as the result of the year s
catch. In those days whalebone was per-
haps 20 cents pound. Now it's So so a
pound here, and about 81 on the other side
No, that doesn't mean the revival of the
whaling industry. 1 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 of revival You see,
IN the old days the whale was chiefly valu-
able for hts 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
and electricity killed that business. And
now whalebone-which caters purely to
feminine vanity-is the only prop left to a
once great industry.
Oils still used to some extent in the
trades. tanning. for instance; but it is
rapidly being supplanted by menhaden Oil
which is much cheaper and can be obtained
decade has sold at 81 gallon; 1t now sells
when 1t sells at all at 80 cents; and there Is
little demand for 1t even at that price, as
menhaden oil Is few cents cheaper yet
We used to run big distilleries out in San
Francisco. but we've given up that branch
OF the business entirely to the bone. The
demand for the Oil was not sufficient to
pay for its refining and freight.
why doesn't whalebone, wholesaling at
$3.50 a pound. mean a revival of the whal-
ing industry? Because 1t costs too close to
So 80 pound to get 1t to market Whal-
ing nowadays is not what it was. Whal-
erS are not sailing vessels of assorted sizes
and rig and mongrel crews. They are big,
strongly built steamers, built particularly
with a view to withstanding 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 a year or two
and come back without having more than
seen whale. Whales are scarce these
days. Then. again, it may be out only
month or two and get caught in the ice.
Last season We lost two OF our vessels that
way.
1.-THE whaling grounds are ever so much
farther north nowadays than they We're
thirty or forty years ago. Moreover 1t is
the 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-it
right whale that acts as sieve-prevents
anything too big from going down. Each
whalebone is long and fiat, tapering to a
point, and near the point is fringed with
what looks not unlike horsehair, but it is
really fbers of the 'bone'-if one may use
such an expression. considering that bone
is not fbrous, real bone, at least. The
compared with other species, and he Is
even less so now than formerly or at least
he's less SO In accessible waters, though
one Of our captains who was in here a day
or two ago told me that he felt sure that
there were just as many of them as ever,
industry was at It's height had driven them
all to the inaccessible waters around the
poles. They're as numerous. but not so
fooiish-educated by adversely, as 1t WERE"