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    After clambering up a goodly number of steps we found ourselves amidst the stores, all made with planks, the manager's and doctor's quarters, in the centre finally of an intelligent and successful enterprise.

    This then is a good illustration of a double standard; the shore workers below, on the beach, in cabins made of branches, surrounded by rotting fish guts; the management, and the fish, comfortably installed in plank-constructed stores.

    In fact, Gobineau has a poor opinion of the shore workers;

    At sea, these people are passengers only. They are crowded together as tightly as is useful in every coner of the ship. They are not particular and settle for little. Once they reach the shore, they are disembarked and sail no more for the rest of the season; their duties are limited to receiving the fish brought in by the fishermen, splitting and gutting it, extracting the livers for their oil, spreading the fish between layers of salt, and finally subjecting it to the different phases of its drying on the beaches.

    Gobineau would have us believe that the shore workers led a life of undemanding simplicity, humble and satisfied with their modest lot. He even goes so far as to condemn them. Contrasting the fisherman with the shore worker, Gobineau notes that if the former has some measure of pride, The shore worker has nothing like it. He is a pariah. He means nothing to anybody. Beside him, the lowest of sailors becomes a person of rank. If he drowns, he does so obscurely, without even the honour of being partly to blame. It is the others only with great difficulty. And finally, he spends the greatest part of his time and his days on the fishing stage, a rough introduction to purgatory.