4423. You could sell your fish to whom you pleased, making your own price?-Yes.
4424. Would it be any advantage to you to cure your own fish?- We believe it would; and we know it, because there are some of our neighbours who do it. There are people here who can speak to that.
4425. Don't you think the curing is better done when it is done upon a large scale, than when a fisherman cures his own fish upon the beach, with insufficient materials and apparatus, and perhaps not with the same skill as people who are engaged in doing that and nothing else?-With regard to the skill, none of them can show us how to cure fish better than we could do ourselves.
4426. None of whom?-None of those who now cure them, and who have the large fishings. We know how to cure them as well as they do. We see how they are curing them now, and many of us have cured fish before, so that we know quite well about it.
4427. Do you get as good a price for your fish when you cure them yourselves as when they are cured by fish-curers?-We have not had a chance to cure them ourselves.
4428. But you say you know about it by experience?-Yes. There are neighbours curing their own fish near where I live. Laurence Shewan is one.
4429. Is he a fisherman like yourself?-Yes.
4430. Does he cure his own fish?-Yes.
4431. How long has he done so?-I never remember him doing anything else. There are others who cure them besides him.
4432. Is he better off than his neighbours, in consequence of having liberty to cure his own fish?-There are other circumstances as well which doubtless render him better off, but that must improve his circumstances too.