Puget Sound Herring Fisheries Need Capital and Experience
A local editor argues that Seattle’s budding herring industry is destined to become a global titan—if only local businessmen would stop throwing away the fertilizer.
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.
The United States Menhaden Oil and Guano Association put up in 1874, 1,478,631 barrels of fish guano. It is quite true, as the San Francisco Post states, that only capital and experience are needed to make the Puget Sound herring fisheries equal in productiveness and importance to those of England and Scotland. A gentleman who has received recent advices from the Atlantic coast informs us that the fisheries along the coast of Maine are beginning to show signs of exhaustion, and thinks we will shortly have an exodus of those enterprising fishermen to the inexhaustible fields of Puget Sound. Let them come. But we enter our emphatic protest against one abuse that is allowed to exist in connection with the business—that is wasting the scrap that is left after extracting the oil—the material of which the commercial fertilizer called fish-guano is made. Messrs. Hammond and Finery are already carrying on an extensive business at their herring establishment at Port Madison, but thus far have allowed this, one of the most valuable items of their industry, to go to waste. If farmers at a distance cannot avail themselves of this gratuitous wealth, let some enterprising prospectors for business take hold and distribute this seed-gold over some of the waste land that may be got convenient to the fisheries, and by planting out orchards, gardens and meadows, early reap an easy fortune.
“Let some enterprising prospectors for business take hold and distribute this seed-gold over some of the waste land... and early reap an easy fortune.”
This 1877 editorial highlights a recurring theme in Pacific Northwest economic history: the transition from boom-and-bust resource extraction to a desire for local secondary processing. Much like modern debates over exporting raw logs or unprocessed salmon, this editor urged Seattleites to capture the full 'value-added' potential of their industry rather than discarding the scraps.
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