Chesapeake for Business.

Saxis Island, July 20, 1906.

To the Editor of The American: One who will sail from island to island or from one inlet harbor to another down in this lower Chesapeake region, and who will "draw out" the people who live along these coves, sounds, straits, bays, creeks, inlets, clam flats, oyster reefs, crab bottoms, etc., to talk about their localities, will soon find out that every locality believes in itself -- believes, in fact, that it has prosperity stamped all over it. The oystermen down here -- those who fish the national beds and bars -- will confess that the oyster industry is not what it used to be, but there is the crab business, that has developed a market in recent years, until the crab catch is 10 times as profitable a crop as it used to be. In fact, Crisfield has almost turned away from oysters and taken up with the crab, as a more dependable source of revenue. There are more than 1,000 little sailing crafts that every morning except Sundays during July, August and September go out to the vast spread of Tangier Sound to hunt the crab. Without exception they sail in before sundown, loaded to the gunwales with the ferocious crustaceans.

It is told at Crisfield that a few years ago more than a thousand of the ships of this crabbing fleet went on a strike, and held a grand parade under full sail in and out of Crisfield harbor. This sailing-craft parade is said to have been a spectacular sight never to be forgotten. If these 1,000 little skiffs and canoes could be induced to go to Baltimore next September for the jubilee and sail in and out of the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco in grand parade, it would constitute a parade unique in the annals of Baltimore, and it would be a ten-strike attraction. It may be asked, who did these crab fishers go on a strike against? As each one is his own lord and master and the boss of his own business, the query is a very natural one. The mystery is easily explained, however. They struck against the buyers. They believed there was an organization to keep the prices of crabs down, and they simply quit gathering the crustaceans in an effort to force the regulation price per barrel higher. The picturesque parade was to show that they were all "in it."

The crab industries that center at Crisfield, great as they are, constitute but a fraction of the immense crab business of the Chesapeake and its tributaries. Scarcely any of the crabs that are landed at Crisfield come to Baltimore, and when they do come to this port they are sent on a special order; that is, they are sold before they leave Crisfield. Baltimore gets hundreds of barrels of crabs daily, but they are shipped mostly from above the Choptank [River] -- from around Kent Island, the Kent, Anne Arundel and Calvert bay shores. Cambridge and St. Michaels handle much of the crab catch from the eastern Bay and Choptank Regions.

The crab has come into trans-continental demand almost within the last decade. The meaning of "buyers" at Crisfield and other Eastern Shore points, is that both the "soft shells" and the "hard shells" are being shipped North and to the interior in carload lots. The crab is tenacious of life, and, if carefully handled, will turn up at the end of a 36-hour railroad journey not only alive, but full of fight. These clawed and crusted "fishes" are a much more transportable commodity than the scaly tribes, and thousands of barrels of them are sent through to Chicago and Pittsburg without being boiled beforehand.

The oystermen down here have very hazy views concerning a leasing system. They readily concede that the natural yield has grown and is growing constantly less. But they look upon any change of method with suspicion and dread; they fear that any change may result ultimately in eliminating them. There is reason to believe, however, that they will gradually arrive at the understanding that the new leasing law is not to be their undoing, but will be their opportunity. If these natural beds and bars of the lower Chesapeake could only be cultivated in oysters as the lands of Accomac are cultivated in potatoes, what a vast aggregate wealth would result. The Chesapeake can stock the world with oysters when our oyster bottoms are made to yield to their full capacity.

There is a food supply of vast proportions other than oysters and crabs that comes from the Chesapeake and its tributaries. The business of this Saxis Island, located in Pocomoke Sound, is an illustration of this. The pier head at Saxis is a mile from land and is entirely disconnected with the land. As a matter of fact no land product is ever shipped from this out-in-the-bay wharf, but the steam boats get, nevertheless, a highly profitable traffic from here composed of clams, fish, oysters and crabs. The fisherman reach this open sea wharf in their boats. It lies close to the clam area, and every steamboat takes away bags and barrels of clams by the hundreds. Pocomoke Sound abounds in salt water trout, and tons of these are shipped from here during the season. Saxis Island is so thickly settled that for a stretch of two miles off the Pier Head it looks like a continuous village.

REPSAC.