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ATIC MESSENH-i^USriD, S.A.T'U'IEtlD.A.'X, FEBBUAET 13, 1909AN INLET WILL MAKE OUR BAY OYSTER RICHThe Baltimore Sunday Sun Predicts Great Things To be Accomplished Here.The Baltimore Sun published in its issue of last Sunday the following article written by one of its editors, who shows in detail the good which an inlet will accomplish. The Sun says:Down in Worcester county, at the very “jumping-off place,” so far as Maryland is concerned, there is a work in progress—in fact, nearing completion—about which the people of the State know practically nothing.It has attracted but little attention out of the county, but when completed it may mean much to the whole of Maryland. It is the belief of the men back of the plan that when the strong salt waters of the Atlantic Ocean are turned into the placid freshness of the inland bay that skirts the Worcester County shore, drenching it from end to end with the salinity of the sea, there will come into existence 60,000 acres of the finest oyster and breeding bottoms in the whole world.The Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet Company, acting under authority of the State, is now engaged in cutting through the sandy barrier in a thoroughly scientific manner, an inlet through which will flow the salt water of the ocean and “drench” the bay.Under a law enacted in 1905, in consideration of its work in conceiving the inlet idea and execution of the plan, the company is to become the owner of 20,000 acres under the bay on the eastside.In consideration of an appropriation of $2,500 to help build the inlet, the State is to have tne balance of the bay —some 40,000 acres.Dr. Caswell Grave and Swepson Earle, of the Shellfish Commission, as well as the United States authorities, have indorsed the project as a thoroughly feasible and practical one and are eagerto see it put through.Regardless of the private concessionto the Sinepuxent company, the shellfish commission believes the plan, when completed, will be of great benefit to the State and that the 40,000 acres, now practically barren and worthless, will be eagerly snapped up under the oyster culture law.Even at the fiat rental of $1 an acre this would create a revenue for the State of $40,000 annually. Experts agree that with the salinity of the ocean added to the waters of the bay there will be no superior oyster planting farms anywhere in the world.This, then, is the proposition. The work has been going ahead for months and the expectation is that it will be completed early in the summer.Tne story back of the building of the inlet is an interesting one. Up to 1866 there was a natural inlet between the ocean and the bay. The waters of the bay were as salty as those of the ocean and the older residents of the county tell wonderful stories of the yearly yield of oysters and clams.These luscious products of the water, it is said, have never been known in such abundance as in the days before the inlet closed. It did close in 1866, there being that year a great storm.A wrecked vessel was swept into the inlet and stuck there. The angry sea filled up the gap with sand and there has been no inlet since. The bay has became a lake and the oysters and clams have dwindled as the years went by, until now anything like oyster culture in the bay is not to be thought of.Many unsuccessful efforts have been made since 1866 to cut through that sandy strip of beach so as to let the salt water in and restore the conditions that made the bay so prolific in oysters and clams, but the fury of the surf that beats upon that slim bar has frustrated the puny attempts of the citizens of the county and time after time the half-cut through the inlet has been choked up and submerged by sand.Appeals were made to the United States authorities to come to the rescue of the situation, but in vain. Equally futile have been the efforts of the Worcester County people interested in the cutting through of the inlet to get the State of Maryland to take the job. Legislature after Legislature was asked to take the scheme up. but consistent! declined.A good many years ago a charter drawn by 3. Howard Hainan, the pioneer in oyster culture in the State, who early recognized the value of the “drenching off” of the bay, was got through the Legislature, incorporating the Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet Company, for the very purpose which is now on the threshold of fruition.For one reason or another, this charter, which had on it a time limit, was allowed to lapse. Nothing was done. Year after year the Worcester County people saw their bay separated from the ocean by a strip of land over which they could threw a stone, yielding none of the wealth they know is there, because they were unable to get the salt of the ocean into the bay.In 1906 William Lee Carey, the present Mayor of Ocean City, whose hemein Berlin, Worcester County, but who is known all over the State and has friends in every one of the 23 counties, was a member of the Legislature.Mr. Carey had been interested in the project for a good many years. He conceived the idea of reviving the Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet Company. The bill was drawn up naming as incorporators a hundred and more Worcester County citizens, among whom was John Walter Smith, the present United States Senator.The bill was introduced by Orlando Harrison, also a member from Worcester, and now president of the company, And Mr. Carey, who then happened to be a member of the Ways and Means Committee, tacked on to the bill in that committee an amendment which provided that whenever the Sinepuxent company raised the sum of $7,500 and had contracted for the building of the inlet the State was to give $2,500 toward the completion of the project, receiving in return 40,000 acres of the bay, while the company retained 20,000.The manner in which this amendment was put on and then put through wa3unique in the annals of the Legislature.It th '' ‘ ' -oroughly committed the State to the plan, and finally, when Mr. Carey had the appropriation bill signed by Mr. Warfield, the then Governor, there was joy in a large section of Worcester County.The Sinepuxent Inlet Company then started in to raise the money for the inlet, so as to avail themselves of the State’s appropriation. And then came the blow. William Shepard Bryan, then Attorney General of Maryland, declared that the bill was unconstitutional inasmuch as it asked the State to make an appropriation for an internal improvement, which is prohibited by the Constitution.Under Mr. Bryan’s advice, the State Comptroller declined to pay over the money. The law was submitted to other well-known lawyers, who maintained against Mr. Bryan, that it was constitutional, and for awhile it was proposed to test the question in the courts. Eventually, this was decided against, and the company determined to go ahead on its own hook.It did. Mr. Harrison as president, Dr. Z. P. Henry as treasurer, and Mr. Carey as a willing helper, started to work. Major C. A. F. Flageler, U. S. A., went over the plans and tne grounds, and recommended in the strongest terms the project as a feasible and practical scheme. He likewise recommended Dodge Day, a firm of engineers, to build the inlet.About this time another blow befell the company. Senator John Walter Smith withdrew his name absolutely as one of the incorporators, and because of the criticism leveled against him declined to take a share of stock in the company. He has not now any connection whatever with it.Considerable money was raised from other sources. Dodge Day were igaged. The contract was awarded id plans drawn up.Then the dirt—or rather the sand— began to fly. Two and half miles below Ocean City, where the beach is narrowest, at a place called Coffin’s Point, the cut was begun.A big steam dredge and a large steam scoop were installed. They have been at work for months.Much of the inlet is completed. The whole bay is being barricaded. Piles 12 feet into the bottom have been driven from shore to shore.These are connected by mattresses of brush tightly bound together with copper wire. Through this smaller sawed piles have been driven, and the whole thing is being done on the soundest and most modern of scientific principles. An angular cut is being made in the beach so as to provide a deep canal for the flow of the waters of the bay.Eventually the barricade that now runs to the angular cut will extend to the ocean. The inlet when completed will be from half a mile to a mile wide. This angular cut is within 700 feet of the surf bank and through it the waters of the bay run. After this has established a deep channel the cut will be continued to the ocean.The greater part of the work has been already done. By August it is ex-Eected the inlet will be through. The ig suction dredge is daily at work and the sand is being scooped out with a rapidity that astonishes the natives.This suction dredge cost the company $3,500, and it is now about at the end of its finances. Convinced of the constitutionality of his plan. Mr. Carey has interested the Shell Fish Commissioners in the scheme and has secured an indorsement of the plan from them, Dr. Caswell Grave stating that he wishes it success and Mr. Swepson Earle, the engineer of the commission, making the following statement :“Consider that the contemplated inlet will be a success. The Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet Company will haye about 15,000 acres of the barren bottoms, which will leave more than 40,000 acres of barren bottoms, excluding the 1,700 acres of natural oyster rock. It is conservative to estimate that the majority of this bottom (barren area) will be oyster producing if taken up and planted. The upper section of Chincoteague Bay could be devoted to seed oyster culture and the planters in the lower bay could buy their supply at one-half the present cost without leaving Worcester County. Under the foregoing conditions the State should make every effort to secure an inlet as a substantial revenue could be expected even at a rental of $1 per acre.One of the great advantages of the bay as an oyster-breeding territory after the salt water has been let in is the facta quantity of water sufficiently large! between the ocean and the bay to raise and maintain the saltness of the water to a point at which oysters will thrive.“The 20,000 or more acres above Whittington’s Point have no practical value now for oyster culture, because almost every year during the rainy season of late winter and early spring the water over this section becomes so fresh and remains so for such long periods that oysters are killed.“The introduction of salt water is all that js necessary to give the entire section included within the grant from the State to the company and the parts of bays adjacent to it a vast potential value for growing oysters.”Now, the optimistic men who are back of the project say that when Dr. Grave says the salt water will give the bays a “vast potential value for growing oysters” he is stating the exact truth, and stating it conservatively.They say that there are 30,000,000 —* els 'bushels of oysters annually consumed in the world. With their inlet cut through and a year or so given for planting purposes and scientific oyster culture, it is contended that the now barren bottoms of the bay will produce one-fourth of all the oysters eaten in the world 3And now Mr. Carey and his friends haye put the question of the constitutionality of the bill to Mr. Straus, the present Attorney-General. They say they have done their share and they want the State to do its share. Also they want that $2,500 to help build the inlet.Mr. Straus has taken up the matter. He has already indicated that he thinks the bill a sound and constitutional one, but before rendering his final opinion, upon which the State Comptroller will act, he wants to give the question more careful thought. ‘And that is where the situation stands now. If by chance Mr. St-raos’ opinion should be adverse-c'o the law, the Sinepuxent company will go ahead and complete the inlet anyhow.FARMERS UNITE10,000 of Them Decide to Do Away With Middlemen.Portland, Ore., Feb. 11.—Ten thousand farmers, controlling a grain output in the “inland empire” estimated to exceed 20,000,000 bushels of grain yearly, have formed a hard-and-fast combination at an executive session of the Farmers’ Educational Co-operative Union, at Spokane. It was unanimously decided that the active board be empowered to employ one or more central selling agents to represent the union on the coast or at other necessary places.This means that the entire output of their grain Is to be sold direct, doing away with middlemen.Wife Shaves Him; He Will Recover.Rising Sun, Md„ Feb. 11.—Ernest Hilton, of near Rock Springs, allowed els wife to shave him. He coughed involuntarily, thrusting his head forward. The blade cut a gash In throat several inches long. He will recover.that it is a thoroughly protected body ‘ ’ :h the oysters orof water, from whicl clams can be taken at any time and any season. Storms and weather will not affect the planters there, and the conviction of the men behind it all is that it will-prove the ideal oyster-culture location of the world. Dr. Caswell Grave, in a letter to Mr. Carey, says of the plan:“The success of the Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet Company in cutting and maintaining an inlet through Assateague Island between the Atlantic Ocean and Sinepuxent Bay means everything for oyster culture m the part of SinepuxentWounds Son, Kills Wife and Himself.Now Castle, Pa.. Feb. 11.—While intoxicated here, Peter Cupp, sixty years old, shot his son, killed his wife and committail suicide with a revolver.One Killed In Newark.Newark, N. J., Feb. 11.—One person was killed and another injured, possibly fatally, and severe material damage done when a wind of hurricane force struck this city. Roofs were tom off buildings, signs blown down and telegraph and telephone systems temporarily paralyzed. David II. Bow-dlth, «ixty-flve years old, was driving a wagon, which was blown over, and he was hurled to the pavement. He died shortly after.CASTOR IAFor Infants and Children.Till Kind You Have Always Bought■Hon. J. Harry Covington, stats’e attorney for Talbot county, who was elected to Congress by the Democrats of this congressional district last November,has tendered his resignation as state’s attorney to take effect March 1st, and Judge Adkins has appointed Hon J Frank Turner — pucnond V:mand Chincoteague Bays above Whittington’s Point retained by the State, and Iam therefore very much interested in the work you have undertaken.“There is no doubt that a very considerable portion of the bottoms adjacent to the holdings of the company will be eagerly leased from the State by private individuals for the purposes of oyster culture when it is demonstrated that the inlet you are excavating can be maintained to bring about a regular exchange, through the action of tides, of
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Democratic Messenger
Snow Hill, Maryland, US
Sat, Feb 13, 1909
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