An earlier general interest in the subject would have been awakened had
there been a better knowledge of the importance of shelling industries
to the communities at large. As an illustration, the case of Madison,
Ark., may be mentioned. The town itself has a population of about 300
and is supported by lumbering, farming, and fishing industries. During
each of the past two years shells and pearls have been marketed at this
place to the value of about $20,000. This was a crop that could be
counted upon regardless of weather conditions during the season, and it
constituted a substantial element in the income of the community at
large. Can this income be counted upon in the future? A dozen years ago
fishermen made their wages when shells brought $4 per ton, and they can
do no better at this time, when they receive $23 per ton. In 1913 they
took 200 to 300 pounds per day, where originally they made daily hauls
of 1,000 to 1,800 pounds. The shells are now, it appears, about
one-sixth as abundant as they were a dozen years ago. This is a rapid
rate of depletion, and it is evident that the future can have little to
offer unless something is done to insure the self-perpetuation of the
mussel beds.
The town of Black Rock, Ark., which has a population of about 1,000,
offers an illustration where both fishing and manufacture are involved.
It is estimated that approximately $50,000 is brought into the town and
the territory about it each year, of which by far the greater amount is
paid out in the town of Black Rock itself. What does the future hold
for this place? Reliable information shows that while a few years ago a
sheller could take 1,200 pounds or more per day from the Black River at
Black Rock, the daily catches now run from 100 to 200 pounds. Although
shells are bringing about $20 per ton, there is scarcely a daily wage
to be made, and as a consequence the shell fishery immediately about
Black Rock is almost negligible. The shelling is now prosecuted
principally above Black Rock, in the upper waters and tributaries of
the Black River, as about Pocahontas and elsewhere. The process of
depletion is unchecked and the condition is clearly such as to awaken
the enlightened sentiment of the community and the State at large to
support measures that will insure permanent life and prosperity to the
industry. Here is a business that yields a relatively fixed return in
comparison with agricultural industries, which are so generally
affected, favorably or unfavorably, by the vicissitudes of weather
conditions.
It is of much more immediate concern to the community at large than it
is to the purchasers of shells or to the shellers themselves that the
resources of a particular region should be conserved. It is a
comparatively simple matter for the manufacturer to strip his plant and
to remove his machinery to another locality with undepleted resources;
it is an easy thing for the sheller, with his scant equipment in a
house boat, to float down the river, looking to find another temporary
home where his labors may be more profitable. It is the interest of the
community that is threatened. The loss of a substantial industry
affects the profits and the welfare of innumerable persons who may have
known little of their indirect interest in a business in which they did
not immediately participate. The communities most immediately affected
are those of the river towns which, as a general rule, are too limited
in their sources of fixed income.
From the standpoint of community economy, an unfortunate feature of the
mussel fishery, as it has been pursued up to this time, has been its
nomadic character. The policy everywhere has been to clean up the beds
of a locality, or of a stream as a whole, and then to move to new
regions. Temporary cutting plants, or "factories," have frequently been
established in the vicinity of active shelling, to move subsequently as
the local fishery passed away. Only the larger and more firmly
established branch plants of the principal factories have maintained a
fixed location.
It will be brought out later in this report that it does not appear
possible to insure the best condition of the mussel beds, except by
some plan of rotation; but it would be desirable and favorable to the
interest of all for the mussel fishery to be a permanent and dependable
feature of the industrial life of the broader communities, if not of
particular restricted localities.
The perpetuation of the mussel resources may well receive the best
consideration of every State concerned and of the National Government
as well. It affects the welfare of thousands of shellers, of hundreds
of river towns over the broad Mississippi-Missouri Basin, of
manufacturers and laborers, east and west, and, it might be said, of
every user of pearl buttons, which comprises practically the entire
population of the country.
The Government and the States can accomplish the desired object by two
principal means--artificial propagation and legislative protection. It
is the province of the present paper to deal primarily with the
subject of protective measures, but it will be advisable to give first
an abbreviated account of the conditions and possibilities of
artificial propagation, especially as the results of propagation will
be greater or less according to the degree of protection extended to
the young mussels.