592 HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 



be sent to market. I do not know, and it is hardly worth while to inquire, how many souls man 

 age to exist in this way, except to show that in providing so easy and ignoble employment la/i 

 ness is encouraged and a large class of citizens enabled to live in shiftless penury, which can only- 

 breed idleness and crime in the neighborhood. It is doubtful, therefore, whether the plenitude of 

 soft clams in this region is not more of a curse than a blessing to Long Island. 



7. SOFT-CLAM FISHERIES OF NEW JERSEY AND SOUTHWARD. 



In New York Harbor clams used to be gathered in great abundance along the Communipaw 

 Flats and at the mouth of Newark Bay, but that ground is now unproductive, having been 

 exhausted or ruined by various causes incident to its proximity -to the metropolis. Along the 

 northern line of the New Jersey shore, however, from Raritan River to Sandy Hook, the soft clams 

 are still dug, during all the cooler months of the year. The westerly winds of winter sometimes 

 produce extra low tides, and less accessible and richer spaces of bottom are exposed than the 

 ordinary ebb discloses. At these times it is an interesting sight to witness the wide-reaching mud 

 flats, abandoned for a little while by the sea, speckled with hundreds of men and boys, wading 

 and stooping and digging for dear life; not exactly "making hay while the sun shines," but 

 " clamming while the tide's out.' 1 But the class who are thus seen making a spasmodic effort at work 

 are socially very inferior and incorrigibly lazy. Of course there are exceptions, but that, unfortu- 

 nately, is their general character. " What a life of toil and drudgery this is," exclaims Professor 

 Lockwood, who knew it well at Keyport, and gave me many memoranda. " What a low status in 

 the social scale it enforces, and low, few, and primitive are the daily wants it supplies. I could 

 point out cases in which this sort of living has gone down from father to son, as a sort of fated 

 pariah inheritance. An old fellow named Bailey used to bring a basket of long clams on his back, 

 without stopping, 4 miles. Opened they made 18 quarts, which he would sell at 12 cents a 

 quart, or $2.25. Now his son, almost a hump-back, brings soft clams regularly in winter to 

 Keyport from Port Monmouth, 5 miles distant, ' toting ' a bushel on his bent back without once 

 resting. Old Bailey, or any of his fraternity, would work in the morning until he had dug perhaps 

 three-quarters of a bushel, opening perhaps 7 quarts if he should take them to the town, for which 

 he might receive 25 cents per quart. Often he would be aided in this digging by his two boys. 

 On arriving at home the wife and all her children would open the clams, alter which the husband 

 would peddle them until he had sold enough to buy the loaf of bread and other simple material for 

 the family's evening meal. It was living literally from hand to mouth ; literally sufficient for the 

 day was its morning toil and its evening recompense. No animal could possibly live more strictly 

 in its own feral way than does such a family of clammers. Their only luxuries are vile tobacco and 

 vilest whisky ; the only variation in their degrading work, the peddling of oysters picked from the 

 refuse heaps of the planters." 



From Sandy Hook southward to Barnegat Inlet, Mr. R. E. Earll reports 20,489,000 soft clams 

 taken annually, at the present time. This is equal to about 70,000 bushels. As the value is given 

 at $29,500, the average price becomes a trifle over 40 cents per bushel. In fact, however, they are 

 chiefly sold by count. 



Below Barnegat this sort of mollusk grows scarce, and only about 2,000 bushels are reported 

 for all the rest of the State. Probably an estimate of 100,000 bushels would cover New Jersey and 

 southward. 



In a New York newspaper of thirty years ago I find a short description of " shucking" as 



