The Industrial Slaughter at the Edge of the State
How a remote peninsula became the center of a massive salmon-canning boom.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
If the reader will take the trouble to look on the map, he will see, away up in the northwest corner of the state, the last bit of land in the northwest corner of the United States: a long point jutting out into the Gulf of Georgia called Point Roberts. The fishing industry bids fair to make this one of the busiest parts of the state. It is now settled that nearly all salmon pass this point before gaining the Fraser River waters. When they turn south again around the point, they are taken by the fishermen. The traps are constructed by driving a long line of small-sized piles, on which is suspended a strong webbing about thirty feet in width. The fish come in contact with this webbing and are led into an opening shaped like a bellows, leading into the trap proper. The writer saw the lifting of one of these traps that had been down ten hours: 12,000 salmon, 2,500 dog fish, one sturgeon, and many other different kinds. A. Wadhams began in January to construct a canning plant with a capacity of 15,000 fish per day. D. Drydsdale, whose cannery is in Blaine, has a catch that averaged 40,000 fish per day last week. Everything is done by machinery, from making cans to handling and soldering. One of these large canneries compares favorably with Armour's packing house in Chicago. The combined catch at Point Roberts one day last week was over 100,000 salmon.
“One of these large canneries compares favorably with Armour's packing house in Chicago. Anyone who has visited that has some idea of the slaughter going on in these canneries.”
The intense industrialization of salmon fishing at the turn of the 20th century permanently altered the Salish Sea ecosystem. While the 'bellows' traps described here are long gone, the tension between industrial harvest and the preservation of salmon runs remains a central issue in regional environmental politics.
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