The weekly Alaska citizen., 1918-04-29
FROM THE WATER TO THE DISH:
 A TREATISE ON HOW FOOD FISH
 ARE NOW CAUGHT AND PREPARED

whole lot. The bodies of cans were
 hand made by bending a square of
 tin around an iron form. can size,
 then holding the two edges in a
 glass clamp while the operator
 smeared solder over the seam with a charcoal-heated copper. Can tops and bottoms were die stamped much as they are now, but the hand work
 ed machines were woefully clumsy and exasperatingly slow.
 About the first labor-saving device assembled for handling raw fish was the Jensen can filler. This was a
 success right from the start, and
 really stands today with the "iron chink" as the machine that made it
 possible to put inferior grades of salmon on the market in competi
 tion with other cheap food products.
 The old method of cooking was to place several tiers of cans in open tanks of boiling brine. After an hour and twenty minutes of steady boiling in one tank, the cans were taken out, punched to allow the gas and heated air to escape, then lead sealed over the punch mark. placed in a second tank and boiled for an other hour and twenty minutes.
 The coming of the retort-a huge cylinder of thin boiler iron with steam connections. gauge, thermome- ter and steam tight doors. changed the tank method of cooking. and the change made for cleanliness, say ing of time and safety to employees.
 Modern can making machines came into the packing plants as the de mands became greater for timed products. and these days it is noth- ing uncommon to see box lumber, nails. labels, cases of tin and fish yet wet with the water they came from, going in at one part of a plant and sealed cans of fresh fish, labeled and cased for shipment, com ing out of another part. And with all this system and dispatch, the only touch of hands to the raw meat in the cannery is where the whole fish is fed to the iron chink to be dressed. again on the shining tables and in the cleaning tanks. After that power cutter bolts them in the proper proportions for the filters. the filters fill the cans at a rate of from ninety to one hundred per minute, a conveyor runs the filled cans to and through an exhaust box (the filled cans are untopped in their passage through where steam heat -expels all the air and gas in and around the flesh, and conveyors transfer them again to the seamers. where the can tops are automatically adjusted, crimped and rolled to an oA-tl6ut Ut. AuC StOP HI tuC SCom- CTS is brief, a mere breath of time, and then on again to the retorts. If the retorts are what are called small" S4 cases-3.932 cans will be run in at one time. The big re- torts are flve-car capacity and 140 cases can be cooked at one steam ing. The length of time in the re- torts depends on the kind of sal mon. "Humpbacks" require the least time and "steelheads" the longest. Between the two extremes are the reds" "silvers" and kings" Pres sure in the retorts is maintained at an average of 15 pounds per square inch and the heat is held at 240 de grees. The cooking time varies from an hour and twenty minutes to two hours and forty minutes. From the retorts the cans in iron crates or coolers. are spread in spare rooms where they gradually drop in temper ature to that of the surrounding at After that comes the labelling, wrapping. cas- ing and shipping. Machinery in all the details do 95 per cent of the labor in packing plants handling the lesser grades of salmon. However, in those canneries putting up kings" and "chinooks" exclusively. much of the labor Is yet performed by hand. Two good reasons exist for this. One Is that the iron chink can't handle heavy, or large. salmon with out a deal of waste. and when one is buying Columbia river "chinooks" at 10 and 12 cents per pound as they come from the water. the idea of lost raw material becomes discour. aging. Therefore "chinooks" or kings" are hand dressed An iron chink will dress and prepare. for the sinners and scraper, fish at the rate of 60 to 70 per minute, and this dressing consists of removing head. fins. tail and entrails. An ex' pert hand cleaner of kings" can get away with 35 to 40 per minute There are records, however, far be. yond these figures. Another cause for hand work comes in the filling of cans with king" salmon meat