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OYSTERIN AT BILOXI
"3)) 2500 barrels per day
VJAGES $2.50 to S3.00 PER DAY 190^
"Facts About the Gulf Coast - the Book of Harrison County, Kiss. -GULFPORT, BILOXI, PASS CHRISTIAN and Other of its Thriving Cities W. A. Cox & E. F. Kart in, Publishers, Gulfport, Kiss. -	1905
Mississippi Archives D8gcs 71-72
Biloxi is preeminently the oystering place of the south.
There are five large oyster and shrimp canning factories in the city, concerns runningf “eight “months In the year.
It takes, one may well believe, an immense amount of raw oysters to keep these factories going, so scores of schooners, steamers arid dredges are employed all the time to siruDply them.
Hundreds of men and boys also are required to go to the reefs and get the oysters in. The oysters are lifted by tongs or dredges into the boat ansd so taken to the factory where scores of laborers,
Bohemians chiefly, are employed.
These Bohemians are brought here from Baltimore, the chief northern oyster center, in the early fall, by the car load, very much as you would shin irc,at.tle»,^Ihey are assigned to quarters and save practically all tlTeTr earnings. They go back to Baltimore	in Kay	and	spend the	summer
there, returning here again	in the Fall.	—
The Biloxi factories ooen during the season an average of 5QQ*J?arre] of oysters per day. With five factories running this makes 2500 barrels that are opened here every day for canning purposes.
But this is not near all the oyster business of Biloxi. Besides the output of the factories just described, there are several other large establishments that open the oyster, not to can them, tut to ship north raw.
One of the largest of the raw oyster shippers in Biloxi is Mr.
U. Despor-te. He info-ms us	that he ships seventy	thousand raw	oysters
every day and the other raw	oyster dealers	ship atout	as many.
Mr. Desporte nays the men for opening these oysters 7 1/2 cents per hundred and some of these are so expert at it that their wages range from $2.50 to ^3.00 per day.
Cur fishermen own their own sail toafs and can go to the oyster reefs any time and ty the end of the week can have *+0 to ^0 dollars worth of oysters ready to draw up to the factory wharf and there get their forty cents per barrel, money novn.
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