Oyster Monopolists Beaten

New York, 1895

Boss Youngs's Land Grabbing Company Gets a Severe Upset.

The trial of Sidney Weeks, of Bayville, which took place before Justice Billings and a jury at Glen Cove on Tuesday, resulted in the acquittal of the defendant on the charge of unlawfully taking oysters from the beds of Boss Billy Youngs's Matinecock oyster company off Matinecock Point. This is a most important feature in the oyster war at present waging between the oyster men and the Matinecock company, in that the verdict of the jury did not sustain the claim of the company for protection for the oysters placed on their regularly leased land under water.

Mr. Weeks is one of the oysterman arrested recently in a raid by the company on the alleged encroachers on their beds and is the first one to face a criminal charge of oyster piracy.

On the opening of the court Counselor Stoddard, who is associated with Boss Youngs as counsel for the company, filed the leases and grants with the court and after the drawing of the jury called George M. Fletcher, president of the company, and Samuel Y. Baylis, treasurer of the company, to testify as to the raid and the presence of buoys.

The company proved the loss of a lot of oysters and appeared to make out a fair case, but the defense knocked it sky high, notwithstanding the apparent bias of the court, and the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.

Boss Youngs was the organizer of the oyster monopoly and is the largest stockholder. The company leases 200 acres of bay bottom, but the oyster gatherers who are opposed to the monopoly claims that the company is working over 500 acres.

The verdict gives Boss Youngs a severe set back.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, May 24, 1895, p. 1.