The Oyster Trust Comes for Willapa Bay

South Bend, Feb. 22.—Special.—Business men here are strongly aroused by the oystermen of Willapa Bay against a proposed amendment to H.B. No. 2, which has passed the House and is now in the Senate. The original bill provides, among other things, that only actual residents and citizens can file upon or acquire title to oyster lands in this state. The bill is aimed at the Morgan Oyster Company, a California corporation, which has laid claim to and planted over 2,000 acres of the best oyster lands in Willapa Bay for twenty years, and thereby controlled the products and sales of Willapa Bay oysters and secured a monopoly of their sale in San Francisco, their principal market. A powerful lobby is at work to secure an amendment in the Senate allowing non-residents to acquire title to said lands. During the past year oystermen have had no title to their oyster grounds, but held them as a sort of squatter's claim pending legislation which should provide for their sale. The passage of such an amendment the oystermen regard as the destruction of their business and the fastening of monopoly upon them. They hold also that the oyster industry of the bay would be further restricted, as the Morgan Oyster Company have ample oyster grounds in San Francisco Bay for oyster propagation, and would only hold the oyster lands here to prevent competition at the only other point on the coast where it is possible for any oyster industry to assume any great proportions.