The Ketchikan miner., 1908-04-18
sailed. The American market now

tSNkAN ASkN>S sN NS ssNNSAAS0 N SSss- sons. the catch ot the North Atlantic is inadequate. And since cold storage has become s practical science and refrigerator cars known quantity at least to the initiated-and since railways make fast time and fair rates from coast to coast, the wasting shoals of the Pacific are being brought to supply the deficiency of the Atlantic.
 ''It was Gloucester man. seal hunting in the Northwest, who found the Pacific so full of halih1t going to waste that he saw in his mind a home an6 an easy old age for every Glou- csSter man who would go West. Word was passed among the Glou cester ti>her-folS of the wealth of these new halibut banks. and no gold fever ever rageu more dercely than the Waaderlust that caused Gloucester fishermen to sell or give away their boats. or even be thankful for a gale that wrecked the schooner they could neither leave behind nor take along anything to cut loose and fare to this new country.
 But that was in the days wheE the West was Sparsely settled, when u ans portation 10 other markets was slow and rates high, and many Gloucester man lived to long for boat wrecked og sold for Il railway ticket. In the early nineties another set ot men. moved by a scarcity of halibUt in Eastern markets. went from East 10 West to experiment on a larger scale. They chartered several beats. made big catches, but still the venture did not pay Ne, until the end of that decade had the time come. or the men, whO were to make the libut industry on the Pacific coast sue cess. These. too. were Gloucester and Boston men, sons and srandsons of the captains courageous of the North Atlantic. who had played as barefoot boys around T-whart and the Glou- ces,eg markets, who grew up with the smell Of fish in their nostriis and the lingo Of fishermen in their ears: and they knew not only how fish are caught. but how they gre bought and sold. Since that time the balibat feet cut oi Boston has had to change sails for steam. and otherwise spend money and thought to land haliput in Boston or Gloucester in the same time that il can oe put there from the Pa cifc. Less thau six days is the time male from Tacoma and Seattle 10 Gloucester. the fish being shipped in refrigerator ears attached to passen- ger trains. The steamers are out on RI average ten days from polt, and as the cut trip requires from two to four days. according 10 the distance beyond Cape E'lattery at which school of fish is located, the fish is not more than len or twelve days out of the Pacific before II is in the stalls of . Chicago. Boston, or New York fish market.
 Tn ls97 the largest of these halibut shippers. located in Tacoma. shipped tao or three cars month. Now the same company ships an average of a carload day during the busiest
 months, and other shipments from Seattle apd Vancouver increase this 70 fifty carloads a month. At first a prejudice existed in the minds Of Eastern consumers against this West ern Ssh. and tie price obtained for il 5. .s eu.. about half the price Of At l ap.ic hatbur. But within the past .hrre years this prejudice has been 5yetc0u-. and today ,ne average diff ! ference through Ihe year is not more than ten to twenty per cent, and that only b-cause Of the vast quanti ' sb D. ped. which 6cri'g tie b5st months ] i- loo great to justify the asking Of
 a-ce figures.
 "O1e adYantage Of the Western a1libl, fisher in that the banks, which stretch for Gftesn hundred miles up ! the coast. are fairly sheltered, while the Atlantic feet has ron into an ice pack as late as June. h summer the Puget Sound steamers seldom need 10 20 far outside the Straits of San Juan de Fuca before the butter CD the .ounding-line gives the sign that makes the captain order the dories ogerDoatd, and often . good days fish ing means boIdful of fish. But as autumn brings rough weather of Cape FIattery. the boats go farther north. and by mid~intet the steamers lie bg and the fishing is done by Indians and others of the Alaska coast. the fish being shipped in ice from regular stations al Juneau, Petersburg, and WrangeII on freight steamers.
 "Al1ags ss the halibut are slung from the dories to the decks Of the fishing steamers they are cleaned, so that on being u1Ioaded at the dock CD Puget Sound they are packed in ice and trucked direct from the dock to the cars side-tracked outside the ware house, and within twelve hours from the time the boat comes in they are en their way East.