MARYLAND: OYSTER INDUSTERY. 



447 



amounted to 793,680 bushels. Add to tbis 25,000 bushels received by steamers, and the total retail 

 trade is found to be 818,680 bushels. The average price paid for shucking raw oysters is 15 cents 

 a gallon; these being all of tine quality will open a gallon to a bushel, and hence the amount paid 

 for opening 818,680 bushels would be $122,802. Estimating the average amount made by the 

 shuckers at $6 a week, or $192 for the season, it is seen that there are 640 men steadily employed 

 for nearly eight months of the year in opening oysters for local consumption in Baltimore. There 

 is, in addition to these, a large number of men who sell oysters around the streets; others who rent 

 a cellar room and sell from there; some engaged in driving oyster carts, and a few employed only 

 during the oyster season in restaurants as extra help. As near as can be discovered, the number 

 of these may be placed at 500, with wages and earnings amounting to $96,000. Of these 1,140 men 

 about 800 are negroes. 



The local consumption of towns on the bay is about 200,000 bushels a season, the shucking 

 of which pays $30,000 to 1.30 men. Estimating an average of five to a family, these 1,290 men who 

 are engaged in shucking and selling oysters for local consumption throughout the State represent 

 an aggregate of 6,450 individuals. Knowing the consumption per capita of Baltimore and suburbs, 

 and calculating tfcat the inhabitants of the tide-water counties consume proportionately at least 

 twice as many, it is easy to obtain an approximate idea of the total number of oysters annually 

 consumed in the State, and not found in the returns from the packers. Of course the interior coun- 

 ties are not considered here, as they receive oysters from the packers which have already been 

 noted. The estimate that the tide-water counties consume locally twice as many as Baltimore in 

 proportion to the number of inhabitants, is based upon careful inquiry among well informed persons. 

 On this estimate, taking the population as returned by the present census, there are about 875,000 

 bushels annually consumed in the counties bordering on the bay, in addition to the 200,000 bushels 

 consumed in the towns on the bay. These oysters are generally opened by the families who eat 

 them, and hence there is no expense for shucking. 



In some of the lower counties of the State oysters often pass current as money, and in one 

 town there is a weekly paper (subscription price $1), about fifty of the subscribers to which annu- 

 ally pay in oysters. As the editor thus receives from 100 to 125 bushels of oysters a season, 

 all of which are used in his own family, I readily believe his assertion that he "was very fond of 

 oysters." 



Summing up the total of all engaged in the oyster trade we have: 



In the above enumeration no account has been taken of the number of owners of the dredge, 

 the scrape, and the running boats, as any attempt to obtain such would be futile, since not even 

 the, names of the boats can be ascertained. If it were possible to gather this information it would 

 swell the above figures to much larger proportions. From the $1,860,000, the present estimated 



