_The Fish Industries Gazette_--Ah, yes! For some reason not clear
(though it is an engaging thing, I think) the word "gazette" is the
great word among the titles of trade journals. There are _The Jewellers'
Gazette_ and _The Women's Wear Gazette_ and _The Poulterers' Gazette_
(of London), and _The Maritime Gazette_ (of Halifax), and other gazettes
quite without number. This word "gazette" makes its appeal, too,
curiously enough, to those who christen country papers; and trade
journals have much of the intimate charm of country papers. The "trade"
in each case is a kind of neighborly community, separated in its parts
by space, but joined in unity of sympathy. "Personals" are a vital
feature of trade papers. "Walter Conner, who for some time has conducted
a bakery and fish market at Hudson, N. Y., has removed to Fort Edward,
leaving his brother Ed in charge at the Hudson place of business."
_The Fish Industries Gazette_, as I say, was one of several in its
field, in friendly rivalry with _The Oyster Trade and Fisherman_ and
_The Pacific Fisheries_. It comprised two departments: the fresh fish
and oyster department, and myself. I was, as an editorial announcement
said at the beginning of my tenure of office, a "reorganization of our
salt, smoked, and pickled fish department." The delectable, mellow
spirit of the country paper, so removed from the crash and whirr of
metropolitan journalism, rested in this, too, that upon the _Gazette_ I
did practically everything on the paper except the linotyping. Reporter,
editorial writer, exchange editor, make-up man, proof-reader,
correspondent, advertisement solicitor, was I.
As exchange editor, did I read all the papers in the English language in
eager search of fish news. And while you are about the matter, just find
me a finer bit of literary style evoking the romance of the vast wastes
of the moving sea, in Stevenson, Defoe, anywhere you please, than such a
news item as this: "Capt. Ezra Pound, of the bark _Elnora_, of Salem,
Mass., spoke a lonely vessel in latitude this and longitude that,
September 8. She proved to be the whaler _Wanderer_, and her captain
said that she had been nine months at sea, that all on board were well,
and that he had stocked so many barrels of whale oil."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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