Second Shetland Truck System Report

Chapter 353

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15,043. What was the price of flour at June 26, 1871?-Common overhead flour about that date in June was 16s. per boll, and the best overhead would have been 18s. or 18s. 6d. There is another quality of fine flour, the finest quality we keep, which would have been about 22s. per boll, or 5s. 6d. per quarter.

15,044. Was the price the same about 5th July following?-About the same. There has been little or no alteration on the price of that flour almost the whole season.

15,045. If you saw an entry of flour at 5s. in a pa.s.sbook, and another of overhead flour at 1s. 3d. in the same book within the course of a month, would you think it probable they were the same article,-the quant.i.ty not being mentioned?-Yes. 5s. would be the price of a lispund, or four pecks and 1s. 3d. of peck.

15,046. Shetland meal, I suppose, is an article that you hardly ever have in the market?-We seldom or never buy it. In fact there is very little of it now to be got.

15,047. Then you cannot give me any information as to the price of it last July?-Not last July, but it always sells considerably below the price of south-country meal.

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LERWICK, TUESDAY, JANUARY 30, 1872.

-MR GUTHRIE.

ANDREW JOHN GRIERSON, examined.

15,048. Are you the proprietor of the estate of Quendale?-I am.

15,049. Are you also engaged in the fish-curing business?-I am.

I have been so for 11 years.

15,050. Mr. Ogilvy Jamieson is your shopkeeper at Quendale, and keeps a shop there for the supply of your neighbours and fishermen?-Yes, for the supply of my fishermen primarily, and for any one else who chooses to go to it.

15,051. The returns you have made to me show the amount of dealing which these fishermen have had in accounts at your shop, and also other particulars of your business?-They do. They have been made up from my ledger for the two years which have been selected.

15,052. Were these favourable years for the fishing, or otherwise?-1871 was an exceedingly favourable year. I should say that 1867 was not more than a medium year. The price was miserable, but I had a great quant.i.ty of fish. Both the fishing and the price were good in 1871.

15,053. How do you arrange with your men about boats? Do the boats belong to themselves, or are they hired out?-I have no boats. They are debited to the men.

15,054. How long does it generally take for a man to pay up the price of his boat?-I have had no experience of these six-oared boats, such as I have been furnishing lately, because the fishing was entirely of saith until now.

15,055. Have you introduced larger boats lately?-Yes. I have got the men encouraged to take them within the last three years; and I have only supplied the large new boats within the past season.

15,056. About what number of tenants have you upon your estate?-I can tell by referring to the copy of my valuation return for the last year; but only one half, the smaller half, of my property is in Dunrossness. There are 48 tenants on Quendale and Brough, in Dunrossness.

15,057. Does that include the large farm there?-No; I am not including myself. I am holding my own farm, and I have counted it out. I have also counted out the Free Church minister, who holds a house from me.

15,058. Are these 48 tenants all men who might fish?-Yes; they don"t all fish to me, but they might fish.

15,059. You have also a number of tenants in Sandsting?-Yes; I have 108 there.

15,060. Are the tenants in Sandsting at liberty to fish for any one they please?-They are at liberty to do anything under the sun, if they only pay me my rent. They are under no obligation whatever.

15,061. It is said that there is an obligation on the tenants on Quendale to deliver their fish to you. Is that so?-It is. That is a condition upon which they sit upon the ground.

15,062. Have you found them generally willing to agree to that condition?-They have agreed to it without the slightest difficulty.

I am the third generation of the name for whom they have fished.

They never sat upon the property on any other condition since it was purchased by us about 1765.

15,063. Do you consider that condition to be beneficial to the landlord and the tenants?-I do. I am satisfied that it is beneficial for the tenants when the landlord will take the trouble; but it is a very great deal of trouble.

15,064. Does it not depend entirely upon the landlord"s efficiency as a man of business, whether the condition is a beneficial one for the tenants or not?-Yes. I think Mr. Bruce, junior, Mr. Urnphray, and I are the only proprietors in the country who carry on the fishing to any extent.

15,065. Do you think it would be necessary to increase the rents of the tenants if they were not under that obligation to fish for you?- I certainly should increase their rents in Dunrossness if they were not under that obligation.

15,066. You are aware that a great deal has been said about that kind of obligation, and that some of your tenants and many of Mr.

Bruce"s have come forward and complained loudly about it?-I know that. I understand the complaint of a great part of Mr.

Bruce"s tenants has turned very much upon the question whether they should be allowed to dry their fish for themselves.

15,067. To some extent it has; but they also wish to be able to sell their fish as they please, whether they dry them or not. Still it is the case that a good many of them have spoken very strongly in favour of being allowed to cure their fish for themselves?-I would not carry on the fishing upon that condition at all.

15,068. Would you not buy the fish if they had been cured by the men?-No. I would not undertake to do that on any consideration, because you would just be swindled, and you could not help yourself in buying the dry fish. The men are not able to cure their fish and be ready to commence the next season"s fishing.

They could not come to me or to any other person at the end of the year, and say in an independent manner, "Will you buy my fish?" because, in the first place, they must come to me or to some other person and ask, "Will you be pleased to supply us with salt and, meal, and so on, and we will dry our fish and deliver them to you?" If we agreed to do so, the men commence, it may be from February, and we supply them with salt, lines, meal, and everything they require, and that goes on until the end of the fishing in August, when we must take their fish, but the fish are mortgaged already. Then, if we go to look at the fish, we find they have been salted with the least possible amount of salt, and they are just a parcel of rubbish; but we have paid for them already by the advances we have made, and we must take them and make the best or the worst of them. Besides, in the case of an unprincipled man, he has got the thing in his own hands, because he is aware that he has already pledged all his fish to you. They are still his property, however; but while the fish are undelivered, it is very easy for him to slip some of them on board one of the packets running to Lerwick, and sell them to any person for cash down. I am not a lawyer sufficient to know whether that would be a case of theft or not; but when the wet fish are weighed to me out of the boat, it is my own fault if I don"t cure them so as to be fit for the market; and if any fellow steals any of my fish, then it would be a case of theft. I have seen the results of such a system on a neighbouring property, because Mr. Bruce of Sumburgh"s property has only been under his son"s management for eleven years.

Before then his tenants were at liberty to go anywhere they liked, and they were drowned over head and ears in debt, both to their landlord and to their fish-curers.

15,069. Do you think the indebtedness of the fishermen is reduced when the landlord takes the fishing into his own hands?-I do think so; when they are dealt with in the same manner that is followed at Dunrossness now.

15,070. But you are speaking now of the previous state of indebtedness, not from personal knowledge of [Page 380]

your own tenantry, but from what you know of Mr. Bruce"s?- I was as well acquainted with them as if they were my own tenantry. I was living at my own place then; and when young Mr. Bruce and I went into partnership together, and endeavoured to secure the tenants from some of the merchants in Lerwick, it was part of our business to ascertain the exact amount of debts upon the south part of the Sumburgh property.

15,071. Are you prepared to say that the amount of debt due by the fishermen on that property was greater then than it is now?-I am not prepared to say anything more than what Mr. Bruce told me about the year 1866 or 1867. 1866 was the last of a series of years when there were very few of them in debt. Mr. Bruce and I were talking over the matter, and I was bragging about how small the debt was in my case, and he told me then that the debt was very much reduced; and I believe that now they are due nothing to any person except himself.

15,072. Can you give an idea as to the amount of debt that was due at the date you speak of? Do you think it would amount to the whole value of the stock on each man"s farm in one half the cases?-No; nothing like that. A man"s stock mounts up to a large amount of money when it comes to be turned into cash. I would not speak to precise figures; but my impression at present is, that the debt at that time might amount to about three rents, or something like 1200. There might be three rents in arrear of the rental.

15,073. Have you had any experience that enables you to compare your own property, at a time when it was not in your hands for fishing purposes with what it is now?-No. It has never been out of the hands of my family since the time I mentioned.

15,074. I believe it is not a common practice to raise rents in Shetland?-No; there has really been very little done in that way.

15,075. Has that something to do with the system of fishing for and obtaining supplies from the landlord?-I don"t think it has been so much that, as the fact that the landlords are resident in the place, and there is a sort of moral pressure brought to bear upon a person who is living in the neighbourhood. You don"t like to make yourself odious among the neighbours round about you. I think that has had more to do with it than anything else. It is not the same sort of thing as if a factor was raising the rent for a man living at a distance. On the Annsbrae estate the proprietors had not had the fishing for a long time, but I believe there was not a rise of rent there for two generations, until Mr. Walker commenced to deal with the property a few years ago. The land there was very cheap. I think the land is not over-rented, and there has been very little change upon it in that way until lately.

15,076. I understand the proprietors interested in fishing invariably make advances to their tenants, in the form of meal and goods?- They must do so.

15,077. That, I suppose, arises from a want of ready money among the tenantry themselves?-Yes. Those who have not ready money must have these advances. There are some people who do not require them.

15,078. Don"t you think their number would be increased if by a ready-money system they were encouraged to save money and to acquire habits of frugality?-I don"t think so. My experience, from the beginning of the business, so far as I have had to do with it, has been, that under the present system a prudent man who chooses to exercise self-denial could pa.s.s out of all possible control, either of landlord or fish-curer, to do him any injury. He could, if he chose, draw his money and send it where he liked; and I have had numbers of men who have not dealt to the extent of 1 in the year with me since I began business. They just took their money at the end of the year, and supplied themselves where they chose.

15,079. Does it not seem to you that the improvident have undue facilities for obtaining credit when they get supplies for the fishing from the landlord, who has an inducement to carry them on in the knowledge that they have to fish for him?-That has not been my practice. I don"t like to make any bad debts, and in two cases I have turned a man about his business because I could not keep him out of debt. The most profitable fisherman is the man who pays his way, and not the man who takes goods out of the shop.

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 pa.s.s 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 ent.i.tled, 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.

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