OUBTLESS it will astonish the uninitiated to learn that there is a close connection between the high cost of oysters and infant mortality. In this case of course the infant mortality is wholly ostracean. A lay man with any regard for his reputation for veracity would hardly dare to give the actual figures. Yet the scientists tell us solemnly that hardly more than one oyster out of eight to thirty million born reaches maturity. For it is estimated that annually a single oyster spawns between 16,000,000 and 60,000,000 oyster larvæ, and that out of this enormous number not more than two reach full maturity.

Although these figures are no doubt approximately true, the real facts in the case are that our oysters have gone the way of our forests, our bison, our wild animals, our coal, our soil fertility, and most other natural resources. They have been ruthlessly wasted instead of being conserved. When Columbus

stepped ashore on the New World, the Atlantic coast from end to end was literally covered with oysters. To-day we have a few beds remaining.

It is doubtless true that even economic history repeats itself. Our forefathers found a virgin soil so rich it was considered inexhaustible. We have farmed it for a few generations, and to-day we have millions of acres that are considered to be worn out and worthless. With regard to farming, we have learned, in the words of a pat little jingle, that "if you put nothing in, you get nothing out." But we learned it too late, and we are paying the price to-day in the increased cost of farm products. We have another lesson in the oyster industry, for where agriculture was fifty years ago the oyster industry is to-day. We have not even begun the practice of scientific oystering.

But we have done this at least in some States. We have put an end to oyster mining and have gone to oyster

farming.

To-day we raise what oysters we eat. We sow and cultivate and har vest our oyster-beds, and allow the nat ural oyster reefs, or what is left of them, to remain intact by taking from them only oyster seed.

The State of New Jersey possesses in the Delaware Bay one of the most valuable oyster-beds now existing in the United States. But it would not long exist were it not protected by the State from spoliation. Only during the months of May and June, between sunrise and sunset, and with vessels operated entirely by sail power, may oysters be dredged on these natural grounds. Here at sunrise on the first of May a great fleet of hundreds of vessels is in motion. The instant the sun's red disk appears above the eastern horizon hundreds of dredges plunge overboard and thousands of oystermen toil like Trojans to gather the seed that is to produce a harvest three years later. All day long the white-winged ships beat back and

forth over these natural grounds, until their decks are piled mountain high with tiny seed oysters no bigger than one's thumb. When the ships can carry no more, off they dart to the oyster farms of their owners.

For in the Maurice River Cove alone the oyster farms total 30,000 acres, with other beds in other parts of the bay. By applying to the State, any one can secure an oyster-farm site at a rental of 75 cents an acre per annum. And a bed so secured becomes in effect the property of the lessee. Long saplings, driven deep into the muddy bottom and thrusting their bushy tops four or five feet above the tide, mark off the different oyster-beds, much as one land farm is separated from another by fence posts, though these marine division markers carry no wires. Broadcast over the acreage so secured and marked the oysterman scatters his seed, then races back to the natural beds for more, like the minute-men at Lexington, "only pausing to fire and load."

So goes the race for two months, until sunset of the last day of June puts an end to seed gathering. There are other - spring activities on the oyster grounds, however, for, in addition to the seed he plants, the oyster farmer hopes to harvest an additional crop from the seed he catches. So he must put out his traps. And these are nothing but old oyster shells. All season long at the shipping point "shellmen" daily gather the old shells and "rattlers," or injured oysters that the oystermen discard when they cull their oysters. All season long the shellmen's piles of shells mount higher and higher. When the planting season rolls round, they have reached mountainous proportions. And these old shells the planters now buy back at five cents a bushel or so. Loaded to the gunwales with old shells, the oyster ships go day after day to their owners' oysterlands, where the shells are broadcasted, much as a farmer broadcasts lime upon his acres in the hope of getting a good clover "catch."

The little oysters these old shells are intended to catch are so tiny one cannot

see them with the naked eyc. In view of the incredible ostracean birth rate, that would necessarily be so. For perhaps two weeks following their birth these tiny fry move about in the water. mostly moved about by the water, seeking a place of attachment. For unless they can find some hard substance to fasten to they are doomed to destruction. They cannot live in the mud, like clams. They soon smother to death. So they hunt and hunt until they find safe anchorages-in the Delaware Bay old oyster shells-and then they make fast for life. At once and with incredible speed they begin to form and deposit calcareous matter, which both forms their own shells and sticks them fast to their anchorages. In ten hours they have grown so much they are as large as grains of pepper! After that, if they escape being covered with mud in a storm and smothered, or being eaten by turtles or starfish or king crabs, or killed by drills or sponges, and if they get by a host of other enemies and dangers, they come, at the end of several years, to the oysterman's dredge, and thence to your table and mine. And we may buy them for Lynn Haven Bays, or Blue Points, or Saddle Rocks, or any other brand you ever heard of, and yet they may have come from the Maurice River Cove. Truly there are tricks in all trades.

I found this out the first day I was ever at the great shipping port at Bivalve. An old man in oilskins was whacking away at some small oysters with a tack-hammer-at least that is the way I would then have described the operation. I found he was culling oysters with a culling hammer. He tapped each oyster to make sure it was sound. If it gave forth a hollow noise, it was a "rattler" and went into the discard, to be hauled away later by some shellman. But if it was a good oyster, he knocked it loose from any other oyster or old shell it happened to be attached to, scraped off the mud and moss, and tossed it in a wire basket. When the basket was full, he rinsed its contents in a tub of water, drained them, and put them

into a barrel for shipment. When I asked him what he was doing, he said he was "making" Blue Points.

To-day there is more romance in the oyster than in the oysterman. Time was when the oysterman was a sailor, when he went to sea, or at least to the oyster grounds, and stayed there a week at a time or until he caught a boat-load of oysters. Those days are gone. Today the oysterman is a landsman who spends his working hours on a boat. He lives at home and goes to and from his work like the merest factory hand. what he has lost in picturesqueness he has gained in efficiency. He catches two oysters as a landsman where as a sailor he got but one. The difference is due to that miracle worker we call gasoline.

But

In the old days an oyster-boat was necessarily a sailing boat. To-day it is the same craft, but it operates by gasoline, even though it still carries sails. Were it not that the State law absolutely forbids the catching of seed oysters with power boats of any description, the Delaware Bay fleet would doubtless long ago have abandoned its sails entirely. So now the sails are retained for use on the natural beds. And sometimes they help in dredging by steadying a craft, and again they are always helpful in the daily run to and from the oyster grounds when there is a favorable wind. And in some cases they are absolutely essential in rough weather. For some ship-owners have never installed gasoline engines for propelling their boats, but push their oyster ships instead with small power boats. Curious, indeed, is the spectacle of a goodly schooner, sails set perhaps, but being propelled by a chugging motor boat triced up snug against the stern. In still water, or when it is not too windy, that makeshift answers very well; but let the wind kick up a sea and the motor boat must cut loose. So the canvas sail is still the oysterman's trump card.

While yet the stars are shining the oysterman begins his day, for he aims to be at the oyster grounds by sunrise. Seemingly all the fleet wakes up at once. In the darkness scores of boats lie still

as painted ships at their moorings at the oyster wharves. Almost can one hear a pin drop in the silence. Fifteen minutes later the place is a-buzz with activity. Lights appear in ships' cabins and on shore. Smoke issues from scores of boats. The cooks have come aboard. Those hands who sleep on board are dressing. Others are coming from shore. Lanterns bob in the dark. Buckets drop into the tide for water. The heavy tramp of boots is heard on wooden decks. Voices sound through the dark

ness.

"Cast off!" comes an order from the captain of the outer boat of a half-dozen trussed up side by side to a pier end. A rope thumps on a deck. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the shapely schooner begins to swing with wind and tide. The sails catch the breeze and belly out. The little craft describes a graceful arc, then heads down the river, her white sailing light flashing aloft, her red and green lanterns aglow in the rigging. Or, if she be propelled by a motor boat astern, a white light sparkles at her taffrail. Singly, in pairs, and sometimes even three or four abreast, the white boats head out to sea like a straggling line of sheep making for the pasture. For presently the line of sails stretches for miles along the tide and scores of oyster schooners trail each other down the peaceful Maurice River.

Within the snug, warm cabins hungry deck-hands are stowing away meals fit for kings; for the oysterman must have the best of everything, and plenty of it. Then the bar is reached and crossed, generally, though the first day I went to the oyster grounds the entire fleet hung up on it for half an hour. And now the boats are near the oyster farms. Thirty thousand acres is a wide expanse, and for eight miles we chugged straight through oyster-beds before we came to

the grounds we were to dredge, and the end of the oyster farms was still far distant.

"There's our corner stake," said a deck-hand to me, indicating a bunch of saplings that thrust up dead ahead. A moment later we passed the stakes. "Let go your dredges!" came the command from the wheel-house. Overboard plunged the iron dredges, one on either side, while the crews stood by, ready to handle the catch. Baskets, culling hammers, and oyster shovels were within easy reach.

On we went for some space. Suddenly a noisy clanking arose in the hold. The winding drums began to revolve. One of the dredge chains became taut, then was rolled in by the revolving winder. Then the dredge itself shot out of the water, like some huge monster of the sea, slid up over the roller in the ship's rail, and was seized by sturdy hands and hauled inboard. The catch was emptied on the deck, the dredge dumped back into the brine, and, dropping to one knee, each man in the dredge crew seized a culling hammer and began to separate the ostracean sheep from the goats. The good oysters went into baskets-primes by themselves-and old shells and "rattlers" into the discard heap. Fast and nimble were the workers, yet before they could completely cull the pile the chain began to rattle once more and the dredge to come in. Seizing shovels, the cullers flung the discarded shells back into the deep, the while a new dredgeful was coming over the side. So from sunrise to ten o'clock the dredges came up, one after the other, culling hammers went tap, tap, tap, incessantly, shovels flashed in the sun, old shells went plunging back into the sea, and the pile of good oysters grew amidships by the hundreds of baskets. Then a whistle blew. The engine stopped.

The deck-hands dropped their imple ments and trooped to the cabin. Dinne: was served.

The meal eaten, work was resumed Until two o'clock dredging continued Then the dredges came up for the last time and were stowed aboard. The ship picked up her heels as well as a ship could that carried four hundred bushels of oysters on her deck, and by four o'clock had covered the sixteen miles that separated her from her pier. Ther the oysters were shoveled to a floz where they were to lie in the brackish water to clean and fatten, the deck was rinsed, and everything made shipshape. By five we were tied up for the night ai our pier, where other workers ha fetched the fattened bivalves in scows from other floats, and were busy reculling, counting, sacking, and stowing oys ters aboard the waiting trains that daily carry eighty to one hundred solid cars of oysters from this great American oyster port.

One cannot see this enormous traffic in oysters without being reminded of those that accompanied the walrus and the carpenter on that fatal walk along the shore. For,

Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;

And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more.

And doubtless all of us have played the parts of the walrus and the carpenter. But, fortunately, there is little danger of all our oysters going the way of those that followed the walrus and the carpenter. For in time our oystermen have learned that if you put nothing in you get nothing out. And so, though the incredible ostracean mortality rate for infants may help to keep up the price, artificial cultivation will doubtless insure a continuation of the species.

I

N a magazine of recent date I read a terrifying article about the number

of morons in the United States. The writer adduced from statistics relating to our drafted army and from other sources the conclusion that a majority of all our citizens were morons, and then reasoned that, since the majority rules, we must be governed by a class of men with the mentality of twelve-year-old children.

With my National egotism much chastened by this startling revelation, I spent some time in reflection. Some questions occurred to me: What do these morons look like? Who is this twelve-year-old by whom they are measured? How much does a child of twelve know? Is there a race of super-morons, who attain, say, to a mentality of sixteen years, and form possibly another thirty-three per cent of our population? By what instrument is a mind measured, and who are the official measurers?

I have had a very illuminating opportunity to witness some official measuring, and can perhaps relieve the anxiety of readers who are concerned about this new peril.

Some months ago I was a civilian instructor in general education at a coastdefense fort in New England. During the previous summer a million dollars had been spent on a school for instructors at Fort Grant, near Chicago, and at this school, which I did not attend, a system of text-books and psychological tests for mental measurements had been devised. Then when the soldiers' schools like mine were in session experts came periodically to measure the capacity and growth of the students' minds and to determine who the morons were.

At that time, the fall and winter of 1920-1, the Army was recruiting as rapidly as possible, and candidates for

BY BARRON C. WATSON

enlistment were not required to pass a literacy test. I had men who could not read or write in any language, foreigners who could not write the English language, and men who had been through the first few grades of grammar school. There were a few soldiers in the school who were more advanced, but most of the pupils were classed as illiterates. Of the whole number I tried to instruct during the year about seven per cent were either very stupid or halfwitted; the others were fairly bright boys and men who had had very little or no schooling.

The expert appeared, provided with blanks to be filled out by the boys according to directions which he read aloud.

These tests were divided into grades named after the letters of the Greek alphabet, and some of them would have been difficult for a welleducated man to have passed, as they were full of mental twisters and had to be done rapidly-the expert used a stop-watch.

The tests were almost impossible for my men. Some of them quit after the first question because they didn't know what the examiner was talking about. For instance, if the examination sheet had pictures of a half-dozen geometrical figures on it and the expert read rapidly, "If water is the liquid form of ice, put a cross in the semicircle; if not, put a triangle in the oval," and the man didn't know what a semicircle or oval was, he would give up the question. If he failed on all the others for similar reasons, he would be listed in some records at Washington as a mental deficient, and go to swell the total to show some startling and false National average, when in truth he was only an ordinarily intelligent man with a small Vocabulary.

The psychologists who have made most of the tests to determine mental capacity, native intelligence, powers of observation, etc., have overlooked some factors that affect their results. One is that the tests may be couched in language that is unfamiliar to men who are intelligent but uneducated; another is that pencils and pens and paper are strange and awkward tools to a man who has spent little time in school and has not worked in a clerical trade. Some college professors would pass a poor examination with pick and shovel under the direction of a gang boss speaking the jargon of his class and trade.

During the war, officer material was selected and men were graded by tests similar to these, and to-day corporations are using the same method to determine who shall be promoted to executive positions. I think that in the war the method was efficient, since it mainly selected educated men, and for quick training they are better material because they can make better use of technical text-books. Opinions as to the value of such tests in business vary. As a basis for forming statistics to show the percentage of morons in the United States I consider most of the tests which have been used worthless.

I do not believe that half the men in this country are morons, and I do not think that tests that show such a condition are based on common sense. It is probably true that half of our citizens are very poorly educated, and that is bad enough. After going through college and working since at several different things and with all sorts of men, I am convinced that the proportion of the simple ones of the earth is not much greater on farm or ship or in mine and factory than it is in classic halls.

G

EORGE KENNAN has done an

able piece of work in memory of Edward H. Harriman—a piece of work that will enlarge the reputation of Harriman among Americans as one of the most vigorous and useful public personalities of his period. His daring, his courage, his tremendously constructive vision; his will to do, not so much for the sake of power, although he loved power, as for the sake of making his railways serve his country and the world. This picture from out the pages of Kennan's volumes makes an ineffaceable impression on the mind.

Harriman loved power and used ruthlessly every bit of it that he possessed when it was necessary so to use it. The ruthless side of Harriman, which was distinctly in the America of his period and showed itself both in American finance and in American politics, is too lightly touched by Kennan. Thus his biography becomes on this side an apology, when it should have been a human interpretation. There is a vast deal of paper wasted in justifying the Chicago and Alton activities of Harriman, which were the subject of comparatively unsuccessful attack by the Inter-State Commerce Commission and the Federal Government. Kennan pleads that everything was legal, within the rules of the time, and that the Government could not find otherwise. While this is measurably true, it is also true that the Chicago and Alton activities of Harriman are those, in particular of all his doings, which display from the beginning a dominant interest in profit rather than in railway soundness and service. In this respect the Chicago and Alton matter is very difficult to explain, because it seems unlike Harriman in any other of his great railway dealings.

Kennan has been very successful in his chapters on "The Break with Roosevelt" in establishing in the reader's good will the position of Harriman. This is all the more surprising because in its day the Roosevelt point of view swept all before it and public opinion in the country at large was heavily antiHarriman. During the Roosevelt Administrations Harriman was the great railway figure of the country. He had combined the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific and Central Pacific and Oregon Short Line into a great system which dominated the economic and often the political western part of the United States. After the vigorous struggle against them, he had joined with Hi!! and Morgan in the formation of the

E. H. Harriman: A Biography. By George Kennan. 2 vols. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $7.50.

Northern Securities Company, to estab lish forever railway unity in the western and northwestern sections of the United States. Unfortunately for him, because nothing came of it but trouble, Harriman had dipped into New York State and National politics, in a field in which he had not a clever hand. He had become, as so many wealthy men have been beguiled by politicians into becoming, a collector of campaign funds in emergencies for the party, and the results to Harriman were not satisfactory. He thought that he had not obtained that peculiarly square deal out of it, that reasonable quid pro quo which many a business man has expected under the same circumstances! Congressman James S. Sherman had come to Harriman for financial help in the Congressional elections of 1906, had been sadly rebuffed, and had reported to President Roosevelt some very unwise alleged remarks of Harriman about an easier and more direct way of reaching Legislatures, Congress, and even the judiciary.

It was on the basis of the report of Sherman and on the basis of the general psychology of the period against railway arrogance and combination, of which Roosevelt was the National spokesman, that the President attacked Harriman as a typical malefactor of great wealth and a general all-around undesirable citizen. Harriman was caught in a very unequal political struggle, and was much disturbed. It so happened that Maxwell Evarts, a son of Justice Evarts, had been present with Sherman at the campaign conference with Harriman. Harriman took Evarts to the White House, where Evarts declared that no such language as Sherman had reported had been used by Harriman on that occasion. Although this should perhaps have been sufficient to have caused at least a shadow of reasonable doubt upon the ShermanHarriman controversy, it never altered Roosevelt's policy towards Harriman in the slightest.

In fact, other Harriman-Roosevelt episodes in Kennan's volumes go far to convince the reader that Roosevelt, though he meant to be, was, in fact, not entirely just to Harriman. Harriman, with all his faults, appears to have been an intensely patriotic American. One of his most dynamic acts of patriotic service was his saving of the great Imperial Valley in southern California from the overflow of the runaway Colorado River, following a series of gigantic floods in the year 1906. Nothing but the dogged persistence and overwhelming efficiency of Harriman saved the homes and the lives of many thousands

of people and many millions of Gove ment property. The whole Souther Pacific Railway organization was throw into the breach, although the Souther Pacific had far less to lose than an other party in interest. The Gover ment at Washington was helpless, but i Roosevelt's urging Harriman stuck: the task in the face of vast obstacle He finally won, closed the breach a saved the wonderful Imperial Valley ! was at the very time when the Feren Government was hot on the trail of Har riman, and Roosevelt did him scant jus tice for his great service.

It is an interesting problem in buman psychology, but I think understandable As a matter of fact, each in his OWE field, Harriman and Roosevelt had nota ble characteristics in common. Harr man had the same daring, the sa courage, the same constructive vision u business and finance that Roosevelt hat in politics. And I have never know: two men so much alike to understar each other, anyway. Besides, they had something of the same ruthlessness when it came to putting across what each thought should be put across. The true friends of Roosevelt always recog nized both his great unselfishness and his terrific ruthlessness when once his mind was fixed upon a goal and those whom he thought he had reason to re gard as enemies of his country were in his way. At times like that a passionate sense of getting a thing done right took possession of him, to the exclusion of all thought about personalities, friendships. or too close and enfeebling an analysis of facts. It was a terribly effective quality for the good of his country, but it sometimes led him into injustice to persons.

In the Harriman case, Roosevelt was the fighting leader of righteousness against some of the iniquities of the railways in his time. Harriman was a

type. Harriman personified the iniquity In his passionate eagerness to win the battle, as he conceived it, for his cour try Roosevelt instinctively preferred the testimony of Sherman to the testimony of Evarts and paid no attention to which of them might be mistaken, paid no re gard to reasonable doubt. The testimony of Sherman nailed the malefactor of great wealth to the cross and did more than anything else to weaken Har riman in the battle before the public opinion of the country.

Both Harriman and Roosevelt were great. Each of them sought, with a greater or less degree of unselfishness. the honor and prosperity of his country. With Harriman financial profit and commercial power counted much; with Roosevelt they counted nothing. Harriman had wonderful economic vision, greater than Roosevelt's. Roosevelt had wonderful political and moral vision, the greatest of his age. It is not necessary that Roosevelt's friends should make