730 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



we may therefore ask now, with perfect propriety, what it 

 has accomplished. 



It has paid a profit of less than 100 per 

 cent, annually upon the capital invested in the business, 

 while money thus invested in other States has paid an 

 annual interest of more than 200 per cent. 



It has given employment to about fifty thousand of 

 our people for part of the year, while our grounds should 

 give profitable employment to five hundred thousand people 

 for the whole year. 



It has done nothing to encourage migration into our 

 State, although our natural advantages, if they could be 

 utilized, would draw to us a very desirable class of emi- 

 grants. 



Our six hundred thousand acres of oyster 

 ground has paid to the State treasury about fifty thousand 

 dollars a year, and it has paid about ten thousand dollars a 

 year to the school fund ; while the Governor of Rhode 

 Island reports that his State will this year receive a revenue 

 of over eleven thousand dollars from eleven hundred acres 

 of oyster ground, none of which is so valuable as that of 

 our State. On the same basis our revenue should be more 

 than six million dollars a year. 



. The statement that the public treasury of 

 Maryland receives over fifty thousand dollars a year from 

 the oyster grounds seems, at first, to imply that the oyster 

 industry contributes to the general expenses of our govern- 

 ment, but more careful examination shows that this is not 

 the case. The revenue is not only very much less than it 

 should be, but the cost of collecting it is in excess of the 

 receipts. In proof of this we refer to the following table 

 of receipts and expenses from this source, between 1878 

 and 1883. 



