No Poor on Chincoteague
An island were nobody is poor! Yes, the thing exists, less than 300 miles from New York, and it is not a multimillionaire's shooting-lodge, nor yet the happy hunting-ground of what is called an "exclusive" club. It is a few thousand acres of sand, producing little except wild ponies, salt grass and a few garden vegetables; not enough for food indeed, for a tenth of the inhabitants. They number about 4,000 in all.
The island where nobody's poor is called Chincoteague. It hugs the Eastern Coast of Accomac County, Virginia, and is protected from the surges of the Atlantic by the narrow peninsula of Assateague, dropped like a plumb line southward about 70 miles from the southeast corner of Delaware. According to the laws of Virginia, anybody who has been a resident of the State for a period of two years may catch oysters upon the natural oyster beds by paying a license fee assessed in proportion to the size of his boat and the kind of tools he uses, and nobody may make private property of such oyster beds.
Even a stupid person need not think more than twice to realize that under these conditions there could be no such thing as poverty on an island so situated as Chincoteague. Any able-bodied man can earn a decent living on the natural oyster beds for most of the year, and an equally decent living as a catcher of crabs and fish for the rest of his time. Able-bodied men ashore naturally do not work for much less wages than they can get as self-employing oystermen, crabbers and fishermen. Even strangers, denied by law the privileges of the oyster beds, do not have to accept low wages, because there is a pretty regular scarcity of workers ashore on Chincoteague, and every stranger knows that he has only to stick it out for two years and save a little money to be the owner of a boat licensed to catch oysters.
Many a time within the past half century, the oystermen of Chincoteague, and their brethren of Virginia and Maryland who fish in the Chesapeake, have been threatened with cunningly drawn laws that are intended to narrow the area of the free oyster grounds. Ingenious arguments have been brought forward to prove that the natural oyster beds ought to be sold to private person, or put out at long lease. It has been claimed that oystermen have been wasteful in catching oysters on the natural beds, and it has been argued that this rich natural opportunity of Virginia and Maryland can best be conserved by giving men with capital the chance to work the beds economically and intelligently, by calling into play the selfish interest of the few, and so preserve for the State its rich heritage. Every such measure, however, has been keenly watched by the oystermen, and thus far neither Maryland nor Virginia has dared deprive the hardy race of the Chesapeake and Chincoteague of its chance to live and prosper.
The oystermen of Chincoteague do not call themselves political economists, but they know that if the natural oyster beds should pass into private hands the mass of the people must inevitably become the employees of those who will then own what now belongs to all, and wages will tend to a minimum through the competition of men for an opportunity to earn a living out of the water.