Edited from North & South: Devoted to Health, Happiness and Honesty, published in 1904.

Whatever may be written of the Gulf Coast region - its fruits and flowers, its vegetables and nuts - is incomplete without a mention of its great oyster beds. They supply two-thirds of the world's demand for oysters, are perhaps more responsible than any other one thing - climate not excepted - for the lack of agricultural development on the part of the natives. With a small boat and a pair of oyster tongs no one in the region of the Mississippi Coast need fear starvation. It is this luscious bivalve primarily to which much of this condition must be hid - for it furnishes not only ready food but ready money at notice, inasmuch is everyone eats oysters on this coast, summer and winter alike, and the leisure classes prefer buying their supplies to manipulating the oyster long on their own account.

Scattered along the coast between Mobile and New Orleans are many great oyster canning factories, where from September until May, the business of pulling up the giant product is carried on. Biloxi has the largest factory in the world, and quite a group of the canners are congregated here so that the name of this city is synonymous with that of the oyster.

The oyster beds skirt the Mississippi and Louisiana coast and are hundreds of miles in area, thus being utilized by the canneries of both states and producing a heavy revenue for each. Between 300 and 400 schooners and small barges haunt the oyster grounds daily during the season, and flights of these little ships constantly wing their way to and from the beds.

At the oyster wharves an interesting scene is enacted when the ships come in and null up alongside the little "oyster railroads" with their miniature trains of cars. With automatic hoists the oysters are lifted to the wharf and emptied into the cars. When filled, each train runs into the factory where a picturesque line of Bohemians, men, women and children, awaits them and falls to opening the shells as soon as they are steamed. The dexterity with which they learn to extract the bivalve is fascinating. As their tin cups are filled, they are paid in cash. Shuckers make from 60 cents to $1.25 per day and besides this wage, receive free houses, fuel and water from their employers.

Labor is an ever-present problem with the oyster canners - most of it comes from Baltimore, but the briefness of the season and lack of all-year-round employment deters many from making the long journey to the coast. In order to obviate this condition, the canners have tried canning various products - cane syrup, figs, vegetables - but none has been sufficiently successful up to date.

All along the coast the big canning factories loom up alongside mountains of bleached oyster shells. It is little wonder that the roads in this region are so fine. The shell of the oyster ground into dust makes a highway as hard as asphalt, dazzlingly white in the Southern sun and stretching away beneath the pines.

The five canning factories at Biloxi which is the most centralized point in this great industry, employ 2,000 to 3,000 men, women and children for eight months in the year, putting up sea products, fruits and vegetables. The raw oyster shipping industry is a business in itself, employing 200 to 300 men from September to May, who earn from $2.00 to $3.00 a day.

Lopez & Dukate, at Biloxi, have the largest of the coast canneries; in fact, the largest in the world. The city of Biloxi owes its growth and progress largely to this firm. Its public buildings, new street railway system, as fine a trolley line as one can find in the North, theatre, bank, almost everything of consequence, are chiefly due to these gentlemen. The Mississippi Sound oyster is sold under thirty-five different labels from this one factory, part of these being private labels that have purchased them.

The Barataria Canning Co. is one of the largest industries on the Gulf Coast, and its product is sent over the world - oysters, shrimp, figs and vegetables. Several hundred hands are employed in the factory, and on the boats. Thirty-five oyster ships are operated by this company. The capacity of this factory in oyster canning is 2,000 barrels a day.