WHALING INDUSTRY.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 16988, 10 November 1920, Page 5

WHALING INDUSTRY.

« # NEED FOE PROTECTION. (FKOII OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.! LONDON, September 23. Tho value of whale oil and the need for preventing tho extermination of whales is raised in the reportyof the Natural HistdTy Department of the m British Museum. - ! "In tho prosperous days of the Greenland whale 'fishery'," says thp report, "1437 whales were caught by 76 ships in 1814—an average of not, quite twenty whales to each vessel— j and this is mentioned by Scoresby: (1820) as a specially good year. At. the present day the number of whales caught by a single vessel, during the | whaling season of six months, may riseJ to over SCO; and the total number caught off South Georgia and the! South Shetlands together has exceeded j 10,000 in one year. Bearing in mind the universal history of whaling in tho past—a period of prosperity succeeded by a rapid decline and a final abandonment of the industry—the question arises whether there is not a serious danger that sub-Antarctic whaling will have a similar experience. "It ca*n hardly be,doubted that pro-tective--measures of some ..kind aro urgently necessary now, or will at least become so in the near future; although it is by no means certain what form . they should take. The British Government is in some respects in a specially ' favourable position with regard to this . matter, since all the important whaling ' grounds of the Sub-Antarctic region i belong to the Dependencies of the Falk- j land Islands, and lie in its jurisdiction, i ]t is satisfactory to be able to state that the Government is fully alive to the necessity of taking steps before it is too late, and that an Interdepart-; mental Committee is at present engag- ! ed, under the auspices of the Colonial • Office, in framing a scheme an expedition which is to investigate the ' whaling problem on the spot, with the view of obtaining information on whitli legislation may be based." ; The progress of the new science of industrial medicine, or the care of the 1 human machinery, has been so great : that efforts aro about to be made to found a school in London for the teach- j ing of the subject. It it understood j that St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, j is about to issue an appeal with this i end in view. Further, it is probable that the University of Cambridge would also like to help in the work were the necessary funds available. The growth ~ of the movement depends on a funda- j mental fact not yet grasped by all emplovers—that—to put the matter in its 1 II crudest form —human machinery has ; ]] now a much industrial* value I [j than any other kind of machinery. As ' Jj a consequence, it is a policy of madness { {] a> empby expert engineers'to look after j V the latter and at the same time neglect | the former.