THE CLAM FARM 207 



now in operation on the New England shore, a 

 producing and very paying property. 



The clam farm is not strictly a new venture, 

 however, but up to the present it has been a 

 failure, because, in the first place, the times were 

 not ripe for it; the public mind lacked the neces- 

 sary education. Even yet the state, and the local 

 town authorities, give the clam-farmer no protec- 

 tion. He can obtain the state's written grant to 

 plant the land to clams, but he can get no legal 

 protection against his neighbor's digging the 

 clams he plants. And the farm has failed, because, 

 in the second place, the clam-farmer has lacked 

 the necessary energy and imagination. A man 

 who for years has made his bread and butter and 

 rubber boots out of land belonging to everybody 

 and to nobody, by simply digging in it, is the last 

 man to build a fence about a piece of land and 

 work it. Digging is only half as hard as " work- 

 ing"; besides, in promiscuous digging one is 

 getting clams that one's neighbor might have got, 

 and there is something better than mere clams in 

 that. 



But who will plant and wait for a crop that 

 anybody, when one's back is turned, and, indeed, 



