Virginia citizen. (Irvington, Va.) 1891-1921, 1910-07-29

South as compared with us. standing
at the raw box in New Orleans, or
thereabouts, one can have the grade of
oysters above alluded to served to him
for ten or fifteen cents a dozen on the
half shell, with crackers, cheese and
condiments thrown in. The general
run" of stock, however, is of the spiky,
or long growth kind, all rather under
size, showing, as does our seaside,
prolific set but void of cultivation and
care. Labor now has to be imported
for the shucking industry, and to some
degree for the other branches. The
negro does not take to shucking, as
with us, and the whites prefer doing
something else. Laws are not favora
BILE to planting, and the tongers have
even succeeded in having dredging elm
mated. Physically they maintain that
they cannot tong in over twenty feet of
water. and. curiously enough, they re-
fuse to let dredges work on the deeper
rocks, Patent tongs are unknown. and,
we surmise. would be outlawed if intro
dark ages, as have others of our States.
l have digressed, Mr.. Editor, from
the subject of my writing-namely Vir-
ginia. If our resources and vastness
may be compared with the middle west
of half n century ago. it il but fair to
compare the Gulf States with that of
the farther west. We are marching,
and overwhelming the effete east with
our quality and quantity, and in turn
the Gulf may leave us in the stretch, as
is the far west leaving the middle west.
A single New England State may
eclipse us in the output of fish, but
none can compete with us in the oyster
crop. With the record of 1910, soon to
be before us, we may reasonably pre-
dict that we will rival, if not surpass,
Massachusetts in its output of fish. The
II. S. census of water products was
very crudely taken in Virginia. We are
credited with being second To Massachu-
setts in the output Of fish, and as vie
ing with New York for first place in
oyster output. With the better kept
records and more careful management
of industries generally obtaining in the
North, ii is fair 10 assume that the cen
srs was approximately correct there.
With us there is little record, and our
State Fisheries Commission has had
much trouble in collecting statistics.
But there is no shadow of doubt on my
mind that not even New York any
where reaches the output of oysters i'm
port on fish for Virginia was hardly 25
per cent, of the actual returns. For
instance, the menhaden industry reports
sales of half a million dollars alone for
the year 1908, whereas the government
returns give us less than that value for
all branches. Our two thousand, or
more, large ponnd nets sold their catch
for over n million dollars. So right
here we have three times the returns as
credited by the government, to say
nothing of the other and smaller
| branches of fishing.
The same error has been made i'm re-
spect 60 our oyster output, though not
to such great extent. Instead of three
millions worth of oysters, we harvested
somewhere between five and six mil
lions. And this in the year 1908, a
year of distressed markets with us-but
not so with the North. In this meagre
government report, Virginia is cred
| tied with having the greatest number
of persons engaged in the fish and oys-
ter industries; and yet 10000 is hardly
half of the actual number.
w. MCDONALD LEE,
Commissioner of Fisheries for Virginia.