THE OYSTER INDUSTRY OF GEORGIA. 265 



The colored oystermen (there is not a single white man now engaged in the pre 

 carious occupation of tonging oysters in Chatham County, although a few had assisted 

 in the process of depletion) fill their boats during the last quarter of the ebb tide and 

 the first quarter of the flood, indiscriminately with oysters, loose shells, and other 

 debris of the beds, and while drifting homewards they cull their loads. All the 

 young oysters, of the most recent set, and all the empty shells, so indispensable as 

 collectors to replenish the beds, are thrown overboard to be engulfed in the soft mud 

 of the river bottom, or when the culling process has not been completed in transit, 

 they are as effectually destroyed by being cast upon the shell heap at home. Thus, 

 the oyster beds are bodily removed; the elevations, which had prevented the deposit 

 of silt, are reduced to the general level, and an area which might give employment 

 and sustenance to their descendants vanishes forever as a source of food for the public. 



That community or State enjoys the greatest degree of prosperity which encour- 

 ages private enterprise, enhances production, and increases its exports; hence any 

 treatment of the natural oyster beds (belonging to no class of individuals, but to the 

 people at large of the State) which could restore them to their former condition or 

 would increase their yield a thousandfold could not fail to give more employment 

 to labor and promote the public welfare. 



Being an eye-witness to the rapid march of our beds to the usual fate of exter- 

 mination; believing in the correctness of the Malthusian theory that the population 

 increases in a geometrical ratio while the production of food can only increase in an 

 arithmetical ratio, when all the arable land is cultivated and when all other sources 

 of food are developed by the application of intelligence and enterprise; and desiring 

 to provide every oysterman with an oyster farm of his own, upon which he could at 

 least save his enormous waste for future use, I commenced an agitation in 1887 for a 

 more enlightened, more progressive, and more protective oyster law. The old law of 

 187G only restricted the oystermen to the use of the tongs previously in common use, 

 and secured riparian rights and the privilege of planting oysters Opposite their habit- 

 able highlands to the land owners to the distance of 120 feet below Jow- water mark. 



In order to inform the people of the merits of the case, I addressed several com- 

 munications to the public through the medium of the daily press and delivered a 

 lecture on the "Life-history, propagation, and protection of the American oyster" at 

 the two monthly meetings of March and April, 1889, of the Georgia Historical Society. 

 Subsequently a printed copy was distributed to each member of the two houses of the 

 Georgia legislature, at the sessions of 1889 and 1891. As usual with every reform, I 

 encountered violent opposition. The dealers in Savannah were the principal oppo- 

 nents. The public were informed that the clause providing for a close season was an 

 interference with a free trade in oysters. I quote from one of the contributions: 



The returning of the shells to the banks is rather a ridiculous and uncanny undertaking, as there 

 are always enough shells left there to furnish resting-places for all the loose spawn that may be 

 floating around, and, besides, it is not an uncommon thing for it to take root in the mud, Avhich the 

 doctor claims is such a merciless enemy to the young oyster. The oysters do not need any protection ; 

 there are thousands of beds on the Georgia coast that have never been molested, and thousands of 

 beds being formed every year. 



Whereas, in fact, we have not a single record of the formation of a natural bed, 

 and know that a whole century is not a sufficient period. One legislator from the 

 coast stated if my bill became a law the governor would be compelled to call out the 

 militia to suppress riot among the oystermen. However, after being amended, it 



