Oyster, Fruit and Vegetable Packing.
THE Oyster Trade of Baltimore City, in its various branches, constitutes a most important industry, and one which has no rival in the other cities of the United States. The unlimited supply afforded by the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, and the superiority and delicate flavor of the Oysters, make it impossible for any other city in the Avorld to compete with Baltimore in this regard. About thirty years ago a single house was established on Federal Hill, for the canning of cooked Oysters; its owner had discovered the secret of sealing the cans, and vainly imagined that it could be confined within his own brain. He wore his life away in his efforts to amass a fortune, and his secret was soon discovered, which, in course of time was to convey to sections that had scarcely heard by name of the delicious bivalves, bountiful supplies as fresh and as pure as those to be found on our tables. At present there are more than one hundred packing establishments engaged in the business, some of which employ as many as six hundred hands; upwards of twenty thousand persons are identified with the trade from first to last, in some form. A failure of the Oyster supply would bring distress to hundreds of households. Our space does not permit a detailed statement of the modus o^jerandi of packing. Eight hundred pungies or small schooners and fully three thousand smaller boats are engaged in gathering Oysters. They commence work about the middle of September. The pungies separate the Oysters from the beds by means of dredges, while from the smaller boats tongs or rakes are plied by hand. The Oysters brought to the packing establishments are shucked, and if intended for shipment raw, are washed, and packed in the cans until every particle of air is excluded, and hermetically sealed; or they are first cooked and then packed in the same manner. As an exhibit of the amount of packing done, fifty thousand cans of raw are put up daily by a single house, and thirty thousand cans of cooked Oysters by another. The trade is kept up without intermission until the warm days of spring warn the proprietors that the Oysters will soon be unfit for use. There is then a short intermission; the hands are sufiered to take a holiday and the pungies lie idly at the wharves. In a very few weeks fleets of these small vessels line the waters of the bay, and the streams which flow into it. The orchards and market-gardens adjacent to the streams are stripped of their fruits and vegetables, the packing- houses are transformed into huge bee-hives, the operatives go to work with renewed vigor, countless thousands of boxes of these perishable productions of the soil are poured into their insatiable reservoirs, and by a process some- what similar to that made use of in Oyster packing, are stored away in cans and sent to all sections of the world to be kept pure and fresh until demanded by the ever increasing requirements of modern palates. Pickles, Sauces, Preserves, are all canned in large quantities by the packers and find 7
