11 
did not restrict the man who desired to engage in the busi- 
ness to any paltry five-acre holding, but allowed him to take 
up a sufficient amount of ground to make it worth while for 
a man of business capacity to invest his money in this par- 
ticular form of development of the State’s resources. The re- 
sult was that the producer in these sister states had at his 
hand a production area in which he could bring his stock 
to maturity and from which he could draw at any time during 
the oyster season an adequate supply of the highest grade, 
while the Maryland dealer, compelled to rely upon the stock 
which the natural-rock oystermen were able to offer him at 
the moment, or upon the limited supply which he could draw 
from the five-acre bedding plots held by him and his relatives, 
was not able to guarantee to the consumer a shipment of any 
particular grade at any particular time. Under these condi- 
tions the demand for Maryland stock naturally fell off and the 
cream of the business, even the cream of the Maryland busi- 
ness, began to go to Virginia or other states. 
Under these conditions various methods of protecting and 
developing the oyster industry of the State were suggested. 
‘The advocates of these methods may all be divided for our 
purposes into two broad groups. The first group ignored or 
denied the possibility of oyster culture (not including in this 
term, however, the use of ground for storage or fattening- 
pens) and looked to the development of the industry by fur- 
ther restrictive legislation, enforcement of existing cull laws, 
establishment of closed areas to permit their re-stocking by 
natural processes and recuperation of depleted areas by re- 
shelling at the expense of the State. 
The other group, while admitting the importance of all of 
these measures, held that it was desirable for the State to 
foster private oyster culture, and that to that end some sys- 
tem by which bottom suitable for oyster culture might be 
held either permanently or temporarily in private ownership 
must be devised by the State. For the most part, this latter 
group favored a system of leasing at an annual rental and 
one of the most effective arguments advanced by them was 
a computation of the revenue which would accrue to the 
State by the leasing, at moderate rentals, of the bottoms under- 
lying its navigable saline waters. 
