Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1891-08-01
CORRESPONDENTS.
A Question.


1t is universally agreed that the
bottom of the Chesapeake Bay and its
tributaries contain a wealth that under
proper treatment is practically mex
haustible. Unlike the gold of Cali
fornia, our oyster wealth renews itself
from year to year; and its richness
heretofore known under the most
favorable circumstances, where nature
has alone provided means of growth
and reproduction, can be multiplied a
hundred fold by the aid OF man with
his ingenuity.
The proposition made in the Concor-
dia Opera Hall by Col. Page, Mr..
Monroe, and James Alfred Pearce in
his letter published in the Baltimore
Sun, is the State shall add to its kind
ness heretofore extended to the people
who haye exhausted her rich deposits
of oysters, an additional kindness in
the shape of large appropriations for
recuperating and replenishing the
beds. Shells are to be planted at
various places and the people engaged
in the business are to be allowed to
them as heretofore. 1t would seem,
to an unprecedented observer, that
when public privileges of such great
value are allowed to be monopolized
by class of the population, that class
ought to pay something for the privi-
lege. Heretofore the oyster licenses
have not been equivalent to the cost of
policing the waters and keeping out
nonresidents and unlicensed vessels,
SO that practically the oyster people of
the State have never paid a cent of
what may properly be called revenue
for the privileges which they have en-
Joyed. They now propose to take an
indefinite sum from the treasury which
is to be added to the wealth which
they have already destroyed and came
from the labor Of persons principally
who never enjoyed any of the benefits
Of the oyster wealth of the State.
In the last legislature, Capt. William
Fl. Thompson, who as one of a firm of
oyster commissioners, enjoys the
privilege of compelling every oyster
sold in the city Of Baltimore to pay
tribute of one cent per bushel to him
self or one of the other oyster COM
mission firms, introduced bill in the
last legislature, in which he fixed the
sum to be expended in this way at FIVE
hundred thousand dollars.
Even if this were done, the result
sought could not be reached in this
way, The system of having all oyster
grounds in common is radically defec-
tive. 1t compels those engaged in the
business, if they would be prosperous
individually, to be enterprising and
active in their work. 1t leads in
actual practice to their beginning long
before the close Of the season is over.
1t leads them to go into forbidden
waters aud worse than either, it leads
them to take oysters in their infancy,
and even the very shells, until the bed
is entirely bare of all clutch from
which any further stock can be ex-
pected. The individual interest of
each man engaged in oystering is so
much greater than the public interest
of that man in the oyster-business,
and his present interest in taking a
large number of bushels is so much
more important to him than any posi-
! BILE future interest he may have in
oysters that would grow under the
proper working of the grounds that
the public and future welfare of the
oyster beds suffer greatly for the sake
of the individual and of the present.
This money, therefore, if expended,
would be expended in vain as long as
this vicious system, radically wrong,
is suffered to control entirely the tax
ing of oysters in this State. =.
But the proposition is wrong for
another reason. If the oyster business
cannot sustain itself, it ght in justice
to be allowed to perish. There is nc
reason or justice in the proposition that
those who are not engaged in the bus
mess and have not derived any adj
vantage from it should be called upon
to contribute the taxes earned by their
labor and assessed upon their property
to pay for the wicked and willful waste
which oyster catchers have committed
But the oyster business is self-support,
ing. There is no occasion for it to die
unless the State is to be governed by
lunatics and we are to become equally
insane. 1t will not be suffered to die,
because there Is profit in it, by the eX-
ercse of proper wisdom and foresight
and the proper investment of capital,
far beyond any profit to be derived
from working on the land. Instead OF
depleted oyster beds and poverty
stricken oystermen under the system
which has been tried not only in France
and Germany and Great Britain, but
also in. Rhode Island, Connecticut,
New York, New Jersey, Virginia
and North Carolina, the business can
be made the source of great and I'M
failing profit for the privileges of which
men of enterprise and industry, worthy
citizens, are willing to pay to the State
an adequate and handsome revenue.
Each acre given to private enterprise
will be adequately compensated for by
handsome remuneration to the State
treasury and the aggregate will be a
sensible relief to the burdens OF the
taxpayer engaged III other avocatlons.
IL 90, a., ~ ,ua pronn IN a al