724 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



comes from improved means of transportation, and from 

 the growth in our State of a great commercial industry, 

 which has an unlimited and constantly increasing capacity 

 for utilizing oysters. 



No means of protection can have any permanent 

 value unless they are based upon the fact that the present 

 demand taxes the beds far beyond their natural productive 

 power. 



Of the ten and one-half million bushels of oysters 

 which were gathered in our waters in 1880, only 875,000 

 bushels were used as food by the people of the counties, 

 and 1,018,000 by the people of Baltimore and other cities 

 of the State; while 8,675,000 bushels, or more than four- 

 fifths of the whole, were consumed outside the State. 



Those who hold that the people of our tide-water 

 counties have a natural right to this supply of food may 

 truthfully assert that, if the sale of four-fifths of our oysters 

 to people outside the State were prevented, there would be 

 an abundant supply for our own people ; but all civilized 

 communities have recognized the advantage of selling their 

 productions in the best markets, and it is hardly necessary 

 to point out the fact that it is not a few capitalists, but the 

 thousands of oyster fishermen, who would suffer most by 

 the destruction of the commercial business in oysters. 

 The great mass of the oyster dredgers and tongmen are 

 supported, not by the local demand, but by the wholesale 

 dealers, and the destruction of the wholesale oyster business 

 would deprive these people of the $2,000,000 of earnings 

 which are annually paid them by the dealers, and would 

 deprive fully 50,000 persons of their means of support. 



Laws to regulate the length of the season, or 

 the size of marketable oysters, or to compel culling on the 

 beds, or to restrict the area open to dredgers, or to divide 



