14,893. Have you wished to sell your summer fish to any other person?-Yes. If I was at liberty I could have an advantage by it. I have cured my own fish for nineteen years.
14,894. What advantage would you have by doing that?-We sell to more advantage when we are at liberty, but now we get less from Mr. Anderson than we got before for our salt fish, and we get from £1 to 30s. per ton less than he paid to other men who were free men. Last year he paid the free men £22, and he paid me £20, 10s. for salt fish.
14,895. Was it Mr. Irvine who did that?-Yes. He settled according to Mr. Anderson's order. Mr. Irvine is only the factor, and keeps the shop.
14,896. Were you not free to sell your cured fish to any person you pleased?-I did not think it.
14,897. But probably your cured fish were not of such good quality as those which brought £22?-I would put my character for having good fish against that of any man, because we attended to the curing of our fish ourselves. We only had a boy for washing, but we split and cured them ourselves, and we paid them all the attention we could. I know that the quality was good, because those who knew good fish told us so and I also knew it myself.
14,898. But when you got £20, 10s. offered to you, why did you not take your fish to another market if you thought you could get a better price for them?-It was not in my power then, because the fish were in Leith; they had been shipped there.
14,899. Did you deliver your dried fish without knowing what price you were to get for them?-Yes.
14,900. Why did you do that?-We must do it. We had no cellars of our own, and we had to put them into Mr. Anderson's cellar.
14,901. Why did you not get the price fixed before you delivered them?-Because that is not the practice. When we deliver our fish, they tell us they don't know the price.
14,902. Did you not see the bills of sale after the fish were sold in Leith?-No, I never see them.