The abundance of production should lower the cost of living. But...

Mackerel was so "giving" these days in Douarnenez Bay that the factories couldn't process all the fish landed. This abundance, of course, led to a drop in prices. To raise them, the fishermen threw a large quantity of fish overboard and unanimously decided to bring ashore only 700 mackerel per boat. This was the news we read in L'Œuvre three or four days ago. The moral of the story is that if we want to eat canned mackerel, we'll continue to pay dearly for it.
I know very well that fishermen have to live. But what happens to this limited catch, thrown overboard when the sea has been too generous? What happens to the theory of abundant production that should lower the cost of living? In reality, the Malthusianism of production is everywhere, brutally or cleverly organized. We cannot escape the consequences of the economic law of supply and demand. So, we do everything to make supply scarce, and prices rise. As long as we maintain this view, life will become more and more expensive.
Returning to the mackerel thrown back into the water, this is a real scandal. Couldn't this fish be used by shipping it to Paris? It would have been welcome at Les Halles. I'm wrong: it would have lowered the price, and such a catastrophe must be kept out of the fish market. The dispatch published by L'Œuvre added that the fishermen had only thrown their fish back into the water because the factory owners didn't want to pay more than 30 francs per cent. Based on this, the price of a can of mackerel from Douarnenez should fall. Will it? I remain, in this regard, completely skeptical.
After the story of the Breton mackerel, here's an oyster story that no one has yet mentioned, which comes to me from Granville. Oyster fishing is strictly regulated, and the boats involved can only go out for a certain number of hours per year. This prevents the beds from becoming depopulated. But this year, the entire catch has been bought up by wholesalers, who demand full delivery of the oysters brought in from the open sea. I tried to get four or five dozen freshly caught oysters from Granville. It's impossible. The people of Granville themselves are deprived of them. They eat Portuguese oysters, which, not long ago, were still unknown in the region. The wholesalers paid the Granville fishermen 280 francs per thousand for the oysters, I'm told. How much will they be resold to the unfortunate consumers? Another interesting question.

HENRI GÉROULE.