The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-01-16
CANNING THE SALMON.
Methods Which Are to be snvestiga

Methods Which Are to be !nvestiga-
 4 ated by the Government
 The announcement that the United States government is taking steps to inaugurate a rigid inspection of meth ods and product in the salmon can neries of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, a supervision such as has lately been instituted at the meat Middle West, will serve ito direct pub packing plants of Chicago and the lie attention to what Is unquestionbly one of the most important American industries.
 It is estimated that the salmon pack of the Pacific Coast has valuation of considerably more than $12,OOO,OOO a year. This is on the basis of an aver- age harvest of 95OO,OO0 cases of four dozen cans each, but as matter of fact there have been several years lately when the canneries produced l close to five million cases,
 Most of the salmon canneries. whether | located on the Columbia river, ir | the Puget Sound district CT in Alaska
 are elevated upon piles so that the |, boats which convey the salmon from
 the fishing grounds can be floated un- derneath the buildings and the fnny prizes hoisted by means of automatic elevators direct to the floor of the "butcher room"
 Incidentally, it may be noted that. it is of the first importance that there be no interruption in the supply of fish to a cannery. A big salmon packing plant will handle 150,0OO fish day, and any failure in the supply means idleness and consequent loss of time by large force of employees.
 As in other industries. the last few years have witnessed marvellous im- provernent in the methods of canning salmon, particularly with reference to
 the cooking process and the filling, capping, labelling and boxing of the cans. Tn the average cannery in the Pacific Northwest girls are employed to HI the cans, affix fables and per- form other light tasks, but the major portion of the canning work is per formed by Chinese. In the butcher room alone good sized cannery will
 give employment to forty to fifty Of the Celestials. Tn this phase of the
 work the dependability of the China man is a strong point in his favor for with 10000 fish spread out on the floor when breaks it would be pretty
 serious matter If the workmen failed
 to show up on time,
 The initial step in the preparation oi salmon for canning is the removal ol
 the heads, tails and fins, after which the fish are cleaned. This latter work is performed wholly by remarkable automatic machines which handle about fifty fish per minute, cutting the
 bodies open and by means of an equip ment of brushes and scrapers, aided | by liberal flow of water thoroughly cleaning each fish. Next each salmon
 ir turn is treated to a plunge bath ir tank of running water, and is tAer placed on a rack to dry. The next stage in the journey from , net can is the cutting up nf the Ssh | This carving is ingeniously performed by machines fitted with series ol
 rapidly moving circular knives, which apportion the fish into "cuts" of exact. ly the sizes required to fit the cans The progressive salmon packer has , his plant equipped with various differ
 ent styles of machines of this class, SC
 that any forms of cuts desired may be