"It takes more than a declaration to win independence," Gower answered grimly. "Wait till the going gets hard. However, I'll say there's a chance for Norman. Now, you run along, Betty. I've got some figuring to do."
CHAPTER XVII
Business as Usual
Late in March Jack MacRae came down to Vancouver and quartered himself at the Granada again. He liked the quiet luxury of that great hostelry. It was a trifle expensive, but he was not inclined to worry about expense. At home, or aboard his carriers in the season, living was a negligible item. He found a good deal of pleasure in swinging from one extreme to the other. Besides, a man stalking big game does not arm himself with a broomstick.
He had not come to town solely for his pleasure, although he was not disposed to shy from any diversion that offered. He had business in hand, business of prime importance since it involved spending a little matter of twelve thousand dollars. In brief, he had to replace the Blackbird, and he was replacing her with a carrier of double the capacity, of greater speed, equipped with special features of his own choosing. The new boat was designed to carry ten thousand salmon. There was installed in her holds an ammonia refrigerating plant which would free him from the labor and expense and uncertainty of crushed ice. Science bent to the service of money-making. MacRae grinned to himself when he surveyed the coiled pipes, the pumping engine. His new boat was a floating, self-contained cold-storage plant. He could maintain a freezing temperature so long as he wished by chemico-mechanical means. That meant a full load every trip, since he could follow the trollers till he got a load, if it took a week, and his salmon would still be fresh.
He wondered why this had not been done before. Stubby enlightened him.
"Partly because it's a costly rig to install. But mostly because salmon and ice have always been both cheap and plentiful, and people have got into a habit of doing things in the same old way. You know. Until the last season or two salmon have been so cheap that neither canneries nor buyers bothered about anything so up-to-date. If they lost their ice in hot weather and the fish rotted—why, there were plenty more fish. There have been times when the Fraser River stunk with rotten salmon. They used to pay the fishermen ten cents apiece for six-pound sockeyes and limit them to two hundred fish to the boat if there was a big run. The gill-netter would take five hundred in one drift, come in to the cannery loaded to the guards, find himself up against a limit. He would sell the two hundred and dump more than that overboard. And the Fraser River canneries wonder why sockeye is getting scarce. My father used to rave about the waste. Criminal, he used to say."
"When the fishermen were getting only ten cents apiece for sockeyes, salmon was selling at fifteen cents a pound tin," MacRae observed.
"Oh, the canneries made barrels of money." Stubby shrugged his shoulders. "They thought the salmon would always run in millions, no matter how many they destroyed. Some of 'em think so yet."