The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-10-29
FISH COME FROM
 FAR OFF NORWAY Now Imported Directly to
 Birmingham BONDED WAREHOUSE The Norway Products Corporation Is Building Up New Industry Which
 Promises to Mean Much
 for the State
BONDED WAREHOUSE

Because the people of Norway are great fishermen, the land being too rocky and the climate too cold for them to make living at anything else, is why Birming- ham, Ala, became a port of entry.
 Man has a hard time of it on that far northern coast, but fish thrive as in no other waters in the world, especially mackerel and the little fish out of which sardines are made.
 Connecting up the Norway fishing boats with a bonded warehouse in Birmingham makes an interesting, almost a romantic story. So recently as the summer of 1910 nobody had ever thought of making Bir- mingham a port of entry, for nobody here was engaged in any direct importing busi- ness that called for such a thing. About that time a MT. Lee from Norway, repre- sentlng one of the great fish packing houses of that country, was looking over America for a place to settle down and import fish and sell them direct to the trade. He became acquainted with Ros- well II. Cobb, and laid the case before hiln. MT. Cobb was quick to see the mar gin of profit in directly importing fish brought from first hands in Norway. He sent for some samples and they were ahead of anything to be had in this mar ket. He was engaged in promoting the Coosa River Electric Power company, and as in all promotions of gerat enterprises, he had intervals of waiting when time hung heavy. So he became associated with MT. Lee and his principals, and be- gan the importation of fish shipped through in unbroken packages from the original packing house in Norway to the firm of Cobb & Lee in Birmingham.
 The fish were said to be the finest ever brought here, and the selling price away below anything ever heard of, but there was one handicap. That was delay at the port of entry, New Orleans, Mobile, Sa- vannah, anywhere on the coast, where. the goods must be inspected and the whole duty paid down. And the cash for the duty on fish by the carload was an item that called for quite a capital.
 So. Mr. Cobb went down to the Cham Der of Commerce, laid the case before the secretary MT. Babb, and suggested that the business men here have their city made a port of entry. MT. Babb got the proper resolution passed by the chamber, sent it on with letter to MT. Underwood and Senator Johnston, and almost the next mail brought the docu ments that established a port of eus- toms entry in the heart of the north Alabama mountains.
 Now the firm of Cobb x Lee began to ship fish through without a moments delay, fish by the hundreds of barrels, carloads at a time and hundreds of cases of canned fish also landed here in a gov ernment ware house, the duty to be paid here and not until the goods reached here.
 NOW MT. Cobb is perfecting arrange ments for an importers private bonded warehouse, which means that Birming ham will have, all because of the Nor way fishing business, the same facilities for doing an import business that New York or New Orleans has.
 The business grew so fast that Cobb x Lee found it necessary to expand their organization, and that is what led to the organization of the Norway Products corporation, of which Roswell H. Cobb Is the head and whose office is at No. 201-2 Woodward building.