The Chesapeake 217 



who are most directly interested desire all that may be 

 obtained, and in getting what they can as rapidly as pos- 

 sible, usually waste much more than they get. They 

 resent public interference, and, when necessary, pur- 

 chase immunity in one way or another of political ma- 

 chines an old story the world over. 



The oyster industry has been of the greatest im- 

 portance to Maryland and Virginia. It supports thou- 

 sands of shuckers, tongers, and dredgers. The business 

 of the oyster dredger is to get oysters where they grow, 

 and he has always attended to it as one writer has put 

 it, " regarding neither the laws of God or man." All 

 that he has ever desired from the public is to be let alone. 

 The tonger, for whom certain shallow waters have been 

 reserved, has asked nothing more. Each of these has 

 often maintained his u natural rights " against the other 

 by means of rifles, and both have taught the oyster 

 planter, whose unnatural business, it has seemed to them, 

 might glut their markets, and whose unholy purpose has 

 apparently been to take the bread out of the mouths of 

 the honest poor, that Maryland, at least, was no place for 

 him. 



The " rights " of these men have been looked after in 

 state legislatures by those whom they have sent by their 

 votes, and restrictive laws have seldom been passed. 

 Some years ago the statement was made in a government 

 document that one candidate for the Virginia legislature 

 promised the oystermen that, if elected, he would defend 

 any of them in the courts free of charge should they 

 transgress any of the state oyster laws; and every one 

 has always believed the situation to have been worse in 

 Maryland than in Virginia. 



Until 1906 the oyster laws of Maryland aimed at little 



