18 
to determine what constituted a livelihood, or in other words, 
what gross sum of money must be received during the work- 
ing season by tonger and dredger, respectively, in order to 
justify his continuing in the business. With this sum once 
determined, it becomes necessary to determine the gross catch 
in oysters necessary to produce this sum of money and this 
in turn made it necessary to fix upon an average price to be 
received for the oysters. It was then necessary to determine 
the number of working days in the oyster season, the length 
of the working day and the amount of ground covered per 
hour of the working day. With all of these elements known, 
a comparatively simple computation is sufficient to show the 
average number of marketable oysters per square yard of 
bottom which must be present in order to justify an oyster- 
man in working that particular piece of ground, i. e., to justify 
the Commission in classifying that particular piece of ground 
as natural bar. 
It is evident that in the determination of these qualities 
there was a large field for the exercise of the discretion of the 
Commission and that slight changes in some of these quan- 
tities would change the classification of thousands or tens of 
thousands of acres. ‘The Commission had been directed by 
the Act under which it was created to resolve all doubts in 
favor of the natural-rock oystermen. ‘They therefore adopted 
a low sum for the annual livelihood, a high price for the 
oysters caught, and governed themselves similarly in the de- 
termination of the remaining elements. ‘The best evidence 
of their fairness to the oystermen is that in all of the attacks 
which have been made upon their work no question has ever 
been made as to the fairness of the various figures adopted 
as a basis for the definition. 
It is obviously impracticable to make a detailed examina- 
tion of the entire area underlying the navigable waters of the 
Bay and its tributaries. ‘The Act, therefore, provided that 
each county should furnish the surveying party with a guide 
or guides familiar with the oyster bottoms of that county and 
that the Commission should examine and determine the bound- 
aries of the bars pointed out by such guides. 
