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a marketable three-year-old crop but also non-marketable one 
and two-year-old crops, which if culled and thrown back upon 
the ground develop in later years into marketable crops. A 
permanent producing field is thus developed in no way distin- 
guishable from a natural bed, and every acre thus developed 
becomes an additional source of wealth for the State. ‘This 
same development takes place where bedded oysters are left 
upon the ground for more than one season, and since it is im- 
possible in any case to take up all that have been put down, 
the same process takes place in a modified degree upon 
grounds used for short-term bedding. ‘This fact, however, has 
never been generally recognized or admitted by the oyster- 
‘men, who have insisted, in the face of actual experience and 
known facts, that oysters could not be grown except upon a 
natural bar. 
There was also feeling on the part of the State as a whole 
that the oyster business should be compelled in some way to 
meet the constantly increasing expense of enforcing the regu- 
lations designed for its own protection. ‘This is reflected in 
the various legislative enactments providing for license and 
inspection charges and the various other forms of tax imposed 
or attempted to be imposed from time to time. 
In spite of all the various protective restrictions that were 
thrown about the business, the oyster catch, variable from 
year to year, showed on the whole a tendency to decline. There 
were always oysters to be had, but they were not always of 
a superior quality and the price was in consequence frequently 
so low as to show scant margin of profit to the oystermen. 
The local business began to suffer also from the competition 
of other states. Experiments had been made elsewhere in 
oyster culture. Maryland seed oysters, stripped from the local 
beds in defiance of the laws and in spite of an expensive but 
totally inadequate Oyster Navy, had been used to stock bar- 
ren waters in sister states. Recognizing that the acre of bar- 
ren bottom turned into an acre of producing oyster ground 
meant increased revenue to the State in form of rental, in- 
creased wealth to the State in the form of additional business 
and increased employment for the citizens of the State in the 
form of additional occupation and wages, these sister states 
