132 Our Food Mollusks 



thoroughly and so rapidly that it sustains a never-end- 

 ing chorus of protest against its employment all along 

 the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Naturally, this is largely 

 from the tongers engaged in the laborious task of com- 

 peting with it on what seem to be very unequal terms. 

 But the dredge is also sometimes condemned by much 

 more influential and generally well-meaning persons, 

 who see in it a menace to the industry, at least where it 

 depends on natural beds. State legislatures have lis- 

 tened with attention, and the influence on them of this 

 cry against the dredge is still recorded in the oyster laws 

 of almost every coast state. 



Many now living may remember the profound dis- 

 turbance in the minds of some, caused by the introduc- 

 tion of such labor-saving devices as the combined reaper 

 and binder for harvesting grain. They seemed inevita- 

 bly to involve the end for the farm laborer. To persons 

 who formerly held this view of the matter, the frantic 

 appeals for help that each year come out of Kansas when 

 the grain harvest approaches, must have a strange sound. 



The oyster dredge bears much the same relation to 

 tongs that the reaper does to the old-fashioned cradle. 

 The reaper gathers the crop, but the cradle is still useful 

 on small areas, and on the edges of large fields. Oyster 

 culture can never be what it should be without the unre- 

 stricted use of the dredge. If the industry is to depend 

 on natural beds, it may be well to restrict its use, but 

 there is no part of the coast where these conditions 

 should be allowed to exist. On the northern coast, where 

 states have been so educated in the matter as to have 

 perceived the wisdom of leasing — or better still, of sell- 

 ing — oyster bottoms to culturists, there has been granted 

 with the property right, the equally sensible right to 





