THE OYSTER INDUSTRY. 563 



tition. At Mobile the business is more extensive, and the shipments reach far inland. Mobile is 

 the headquarters of factories for canning the wild " reef" oysters gathered off the coast of Missis- 

 sippi and eastern Louisiana. These factories employ a hundred or more hands in opening and 

 packing. Their main business is in cooked and canned oysters, which are steamed and sealed in 

 substantially the same way as at Baltimore. One specialty, however, is the putting up of canned 

 fried oysters, after a patented method. Statistics of this are not at hand. The pickling of oysters, 

 formerly practiced largely at Mobile, has gone out of vogue, as it has in northern cities, where it 

 used to be important. 



With respect to New Orleans I wrote as follows in 1880 : 



"The shipment of oysters inland from New Orleans has hitherto been of very small account, 

 and principally of fresh oysters. Now, however, at least two canning establishments have been 

 started in the city, which make a large item in their general preserving business of cooked and 

 hermetically sealed oysters, prepared substantially as in Baltimore. Several brands have been 

 put upon the market with good satisfaction, selling at $2.50 per dozen two-pound cans for first 

 quality, and $1.80 for second, and at $1.10 for one-pound cans. About $100,000 worth of these 

 canned oysters are said to have been put up during 1880, nearly all of which were taken by the 

 trade of the city and immediate neighborhood. The capital invested is, perhaps, $75,000, but is 

 applied to .shrimp, lobster, and fruit canning as well as oysters. In these establishments only 

 about thirty male adults are employed, the openers being girls, about one hundred in number, all 

 white and chiefly German and American in nationality, who are paid from 4 to 6 cents for each 

 kettleful, a "kettle" holding two quarts. Work is irregular, because of the difficulty of getting 

 oysters in sufficient quantity and when needed (owing mainly to the indisposition of the oystermen 

 to work in bad weather), and the total earnings of the openers and employes during the "oyster- 

 run " in the factories, will probably not exceed $20,000. These factories have not been long enough 

 in progress to furnish more exact information than is here given. Their capacity is far in advance 

 of their present product, and they anticipate a highly successful future, confident that they can 

 secure the trade of the lower Mississippi Valley, to the exclusion of oysters canned in northern 

 cities." 



9. UTILIZATION OF OYSTER SHELLS. 



The utilization of oyster shells is extensive and in various directions. They serve as " metal" 

 for roads and foot-paths; as "filling" for wharves, low lands, fortifications, and railway embank- 

 ments ; as stools for new oyster beds ; as ballast for vessels ; as material for lime, and as manure 

 for exhausted fields, or a component in mixed fertilizers, besides some minor uses, such as food 

 for poultry, &c. 



One is astonished, upon first going to an oyster locality, to see the huge piles of shells, and 

 discover what spacious areas have been raised above tide level or otherwise filled in with these 

 animal structures. If there are 23,000,000 bushels opened annually in the United States, an equal 

 measure of shells accumulates, amounting to no less than 243,390,000 cubic feet, which would spread 

 3 feet deep over a space more than 450,000 yards square. Next to their utilization in filling hollows, 

 the largest portion of the emptied shells are converted into lime. Time was when no other lime 

 was used by the eariycolouists, and the practice has persisted, several of the New England shore 

 towns supporting mills and kilns grinding nothing but oyster shells. "By the addition of the proper 

 materials, clay and magnesia," it is recorded, " Mr. Kingsley, a lime-burner of Boston, some years 

 ago prepared an excellent hydraulic cement, which is used not only for laying drains, cisterns, &c., 

 but its whiteness renders it suitable for the manufacture of fountains, vases, and ornamental 

 articles, which are to be placed in exposed situations." 



