The age-herald., 1897-10-10
s ME SOFT CRAB FACTS.
Given Out by the Inventor of the Device for
 Making Crabs Soft While They Wait.

From the Baltimore Sun.
 Crisfield, Md, Sept. 29.-The grabbing season now about closing has not been profitable on the whole to the people en- gagged in it. The reason of this is be- 1. cause too many people are engaged in the industry. At one time Crisfleld had a monopoly of the soft crab business, but now the watefmen all along the Chesapeake and it's tributaries, from the capes to the head of the bay, are en- gagged in the work during the summer months, and they glut the markets and lower the prices. Crisfield started the industry, which during the past sum- mer brought about $10,000 per week to the town. MT. Iittleton T. Dryden, the present commissioner of immigration, claims to have been the pioneer. He says:
 About fifteen years ago I noticed that James Landon and John Tyler were shedding crabs in one of the small canals which branch off from the An namessex river They made pens by driving boards into the sand. In these pens they placed peelelfs, and by th,s primitive method were enabled to supply few customers in Baltimore and Will
 
 acquainted with the delicacfss. The pens set me to thinking. The first night after witnessing the satisfactory results from shedding crabs in canal I spent hours trying to devise some plan by which the shedding process could be carried on in more extensive way. Be- fore morning I had hit upon the idea of the present float, and it is worthy of 1,,at I1,ie 1,o- ,,tda TAN Improvements to the present day, as the patent office will show.
 "In the morning I hired a carpanter to carry out my design. It was a. simp1e device Consisting of boards and laths. It was eight feet long, four feet wide and two feet deep, with the laths placed so near together that eels and mnnows could not get through. There were wings also of boards on the sides and ends to prevent the float from sinking too deep in the water. The invention was then placed in the water, and I hired several men to catch peelers. They re- turned that night with twenty-five or thirty apiece. These w,re at once placsd in the floats. The next morning there were soft crabs in the float, and the in- vention was the talk of the town. I at once had my invention patented, and it Is now in use wherever crabs are shed.
 But this was not all. The people in the north and west had never tasted soft crabs; in fact, thousands did not know that such things existed. I made a tour through those sections, taking soft crabs with me, and soon had mor= orders from restaurants than I could fill Then others in Crisfield began to abuse me. They ca,lad me a monopolist and other hard namsE, so I abandoned the patsnt and allowed all to make uss of my invention. Then the industry spread with great rapidity, and in few years it has reached its present prOpor- tions. The business has been a grsat blessing to Crisfield Before this indus try was started the oystermen during the summer were comp sled to get credit from the stores, promising to pay as soon as the oyster season open5d. By this system the storekeapers owned about nine-tenths of the watermsn. Now this is chang5d, and men with small boats can make more during the summer than in the winter. Oysters have become SO scarcel that the tisheHnen are nearly compiled to make enough during the summer to tide them over the winter months. They now think that if any law were passed to depr4Vel them of their grabbing grounds they would starve, and thsir fears are not groundless."
 When Mr. Dryden invented the crab float crabs were caught only with the hand net. To take crabs in this manner requires skill. as a novice cannot tell pesler when it is out of water, much less at a depth of five or six feet below the surface. Now crabs are caught for the most part with a large drag net. Thls requires little skill, although it $ heavy, tir.s some work. Anybody can catch crabs in this manner, and so many are at work and so many crabs are taken that the markets are continually gluttsd. Many experienced crabbers would pre- fer a return to th5 old method 1T IL could be made general.