12,932. Do you find that your cash transactions for goods are generally greater at one season of the year than at another?-Yes, very much greater. Our busy season for cash commences when the landlords and fishcurers commence to pay the men for their season's fishing, and we continue to drive a large trade of that description until April.
12,933. Do you then find the men beginning to ask for credit more frequently?-Yes.
12,934. Do you think it would be better for the trade generally, as well as for the men, if they were paid more frequently, and the settlements were not so distant?-It would certainly be better for us if they were paid more frequently, because then we would be paid more frequently also.
12,935. Do you think it would be better for the men too, and that they would make a better bargain with their money, or do you think it is just as well that the money should be kept for them?-I consider that the money is kept up a great deal too long. For instance, if the fish-curers paid for the fish at the end of the fishing season, that is, on 1st September, that might serve the men very well; but as it is with some parties, it is the 1st of April or the end of March before they are paid.
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12,936. Are the men sometimes in difficulties with regard to their supplies, in consequence of that?-No; because if they have anything to get, they can obtain supplies from the stores of the fish-merchants. They can get anything they like from them in goods. Perhaps that is the reason why the settlement is sometimes so long delayed, because it gives the men the chance of running a larger account than they would otherwise do and then they have less cash to get.
12,937. Have you any ground for that statement other than from mere inference?-No. There is one thing I may mention in connection with the fishing, that when the men sell their fish green, the drying of them must be paid for to other parties; but suppose the men dried the fish themselves, there are often windy days, when they cannot be at the fishing, and then they work at the drying of their own fish when they would have been doing nothing if they had been on-shore. In that way they can dry their fish for themselves very much cheaper than the fish-curer can dry them.
12,938. But can they do it as well? Do you think the fish cured by a fisherman himself command as good a market as those cured on a large scale by a curer?-We have had very little experience in that matter, because we don't buy fish in that way.
12,939. Do you cure any fish at all?-Yes; we cure the fish which we buy in the winter time wet.
12,940. How many fish do you sell in the course of a year?-From 10 to 20 tons.