15,080. But in order to get your boats manned, I fancy you are obliged to make these supplies?-Yes, we must make advances.
15,081. Do you think the system of paying a man cash down for his fish, or at shorter intervals than an annual settlement, could be carried out?-I cannot see how it would work; and besides, I think if such a plan were introduced, the people would just revert to the present system. I am perfectly satisfied that, if you were to pass a law requiring the men to be paid in cash down, the result would be that we would have a meeting, and we would agree to pay so much per cwt., and the fishermen would say, 'We know you, and we will trust to you paying us that price at the end of the season.' That would be the case with the greater number of curers, such as Hay & Co., Mr. Garriock, and myself. The price would be fixed at a particular time but the men would take our word for it that they were to be paid at the end of the season. We would have to pay them a nominal price at short intervals in order to satisfy the law, but they would expect to be paid a higher price at the end of the season, if it turned out that we realized a higher price for our fish. That would be a binding arrangement, on the one side at least.
15,082. But that would not be a very fair bargain?-It would just be the bargain that we are constantly forced to make with the fishermen, because they always expect the curers to be fast on one side, but not on the other. For instance, if they sign an agreement to go to the Faroe fishing from March to August, and it comes a bad year, they don't get so many fish as makes the voyage a profitable one for them, and they say they will rather go to prison than go to the fishing another year, unless you put them upon wages. In the meantime you have made advances to them, and you must give them the chance of that. I know that Messrs. Hay and others have engaged fishermen for that fishing at a settled price, but when the end of the season came the fish had been sold so well that other curers were paying a high rate, and they have just had to put the bargain in the fire, and pay according to the higher price, or lose the services of the men.
15,083. Could not an arrangement of this kind be carried out, that a price should be fixed to be paid weekly, or fortnightly, or monthly, on the delivery of the fish, according as the case may be, and that the fishermen should be entitled, as in the whale fishing, to an additional payment, similar to oil-money, at the end of the season?-Yes, they might be paid at such a rate as the curer could afford, in the same way as is done now; but that would come practically to the same thing as the present system.
15,084. Would it not be a system of paying weekly wages, with an additional payment in proportion to the produce?-It would not be wages: it would be a weekly payment for produce, because weekly wages would never do.
15,085. Would it not virtually be wages, with a bonus on the amount of the produce besides?-I suppose it would; but wages are a different thing from paying a man for what he delivers to you. If you pay a man wages, he may turn lazy and do nothing, and you cannot be looking after him when he is at the fishing.
15,086. But this would be a payment of wages, and something more. He would have an inducement to work in order to increase the total produce at the end of the season?-That might be so; but I have thought over the subject, and I see no other way in which the system can be worked than it is at present. The law will be complied with nominally, but matters would fall back into their old state.
15,087. But if the law only required a certain proportion to be paid at short intervals, could it not be complied with, not only nominally, but substantially, in that way, and still recognise such an arrangement as [Page 381] you consider would be necessary?- It might be, but it would be a very disagreeable and a very difficult thing to carry out. It would be hardly possible to arrange the price that, was to be paid for the fish during the course of the season.
15,088. Would the price not always be very considerably below what the fish were expected to realize?-Supposing the price in a number of years had been, on an average, 7s. or 8s. per cwt. for ling, probably both curers and fishermen might agree to fix 5s. 6d. as the rate at which the men were to be paid in the course of the season, reserving to them a further payment, according as the fishing turned out?-Yes, it might be managed in that way quite well; but then what would the people do before they got any fish ashore at all? How would they be able to live then?
15,089. I suppose the object of the Legislature would be to teach them to lay by something on which they might be able to live when they were not actually at the fishing?-That might be the object, but the people might die in the teaching. It is all very well to come down and see the country in a year like this, when money has been flush; but if you had seen such a year as 1868 or 1869 or 1870, when the people were coming to you in January starving, and wanting you to advance them meal and other things, and a big debt standing against them at the same time in the merchant's books, you would have seen that it was not such a matter of plain sailing then.