The history of the fresh-water mussel industry gives illustration of the promptness with which an American industry may be developed once the pathway is found. Undertaken in a small way scarcely more than a score of years ago, the manufacture of pearl buttons began almost immediately to assume the proportions of an important national industry. As early as 1898, when the enterprise was only 6 years old, there were about 50 factories in more than a dozen towns along the Mississippi. With improved machinery and methods further expansion occurred, until within a few years the output approximated 30 million gross of buttons, with a value of many millions of dollars. The growth of the industry has continued to the present time, but exact figures will not be available until the Bureau has completed a statistical survey now in progress.
Not less important has been a resultant economic change, or modification of custom, that has affected practically every person in the country. Where marine pearl was in rare use, fresh-water pearl, with its quality and price, came to fill a universal requirement. In one decade pearl buttons were high in price, used only upon the better clothing, and commonly saved when clothing was discarded, while in the most general use were buttons of metal or agate or wood, which rusted or broke or warped. In the next decade good pearl buttons, neat and durable, were available to everybody and used upon the widest variety of clothing. A former luxury had become a common necessity.
Coincident with the rise of the manufacturing industry, there developed an important and widespread fishery, directly employing thousands of persons and indirectly affecting persons and communities of varied occupation. Commencing on the Mississippi [4]River, the fishery gradually spread from stream to stream, passing from depleted territory to new and rich fields, until it embraced practically the entire Mississippi Basin and a portion of the Great Lakes drainage, from Minnesota to Louisiana, north and south, and from Ohio, West Virginia, and Tennessee on the east to Arkansas, Kansas, and South Dakota on the west.
DEPLETION OF THE RESOURCES.
Extension of territory could not be continued indefinitely. While up to the present time the industry has not failed to obtain shells in quantity sufficient for the market demands, it has become perfectly clear that the perpetuation of the industry as one producing a staple product that is both good and within reach of all people depends upon successful propagation and effective protection. The supply is now maintained by regularly invading new territory (and it is scarcely possible to go farther in this direction), by seeking out the smaller tributaries of the mussel streams, which could not formerly have been worked with profit, and in some measure by the devising of methods that are more effective in capture of mussels. Notwithstanding these developments, all of which indeed conduce to more exhaustive fishery, an increasing proportion of very small shells is being taken, the bottoms are being more thoroughly cleaned, and the price of shell has advanced to a relatively high figure.
A high price for shell has, of course, its advantages. It is good for the fishermen, provided they can find the shells, and it stimulates the manufacturers to eliminate waste and to use the most economical methods. On the other hand, if unbalanced by protective restrictions, a continued rise in price is of disastrous consequence. It impoverishes the beds by driving the fishermen to the most exhaustive manner of fishing; even the very smallest shells that can be captured, which should never be removed from the beds, are taken and marketed, and this, unfortunately, is the actual case at the present time. (See pl. I.) Ultimately the higher price of shell becomes an element in the price of the finished product and is paid by the public at large without corresponding advantage to a single person connected with the industry.
Let it be repeated that a high price to the fishermen is desirable, but in the present condition they reap no benefit. A higher price for a disproportionately smaller product brings no added profit. None are so directly interested in the conservation of mussels as the fishermen themselves.
Of what advantage is it to the fishermen of the Wabash River, or to the State of Indiana, that shells are now more valuable, when a river that once supported a really important shelling industry is [5]now practically depleted? Wherein is the benefit to Illinois, when only one fisherman can engage in shelling to-day where six worked with profit five years ago? What profit will Arkansas find, when its rivers are now the scene of the most exhaustive mussel fishery ever known and the future is being robbed by the removal of infant shells that are shipped to the markets to be subsequently thrown into the discard by the manufacturers as too small for any useful purpose?
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 [6]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 [7]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.
ARTIFICIAL PROPAGATION OF MUSSELS BY THE GOVERNMENT
ESTABLISHMENT OF PROPAGATION.
The Bureau of Fisheries has always maintained an active interest in the development of the fresh-water mussel fishery of America, which, in its importance and breadth of territory, is entirely unique in the world. As early as 1897 and 1898, the shell fishery being then only 4 or 5 years old, the Fish Commission undertook investigations relating to the various phases of the industry, and several reports were published dealing with the natural history of mussels, the shell and pearl fisheries, and the button industry. In a general report on the subject Dr. Hugh M. Smith then recommended measures for the protection of mussels. No action followed, and in consequence the scene of the most important fisheries has greatly shifted since that time.
Some years later there began a special investigation of the reproduction of mussels, which resulted in the methods of artificial propagation as developed by Prof. Lefevre and Prof. Curtis, of the University of Missouri, in association with the Bureau. The Government then established the Fairport Biological Station to engage in the propagation of mussels and the studies of mussel problems, besides exercising wider activities in fishery investigations. For a number of years field investigations relating to the distribution, habits, and conditions of life of the mussels have been prosecuted by the staff and associates of the Bureau throughout the Mississippi Basin.
For the first two years at the Fairport station mussel propagation was carried on in an experimental way, but beginning with 1912 the practical operations have been conducted upon as large a scale and over as wide a territory as the available resources permitted. During the past two years mussels have been propagated chiefly in the Mississippi River from Lake Pepin, in Minnesota, to New Boston, Ill.; in the Wabash River in Indiana, and in the White and Black Rivers of Arkansas. During the year ended June 30, 1913, about 150,000,000 glochidia, or young mussels, were put out, and in the first half of the present fiscal year that number is fully equaled. Such figures appear large. It is not difficult by the methods of propagation to handle considerable numbers of glochidia; indeed, it is necessary to work on an ample scale, for in mussel propagation, as in most forms of fish culture, what we can now do is to aid the young over the most [8]critical period in their life history, after which they must be left to continue the struggle for existence by their own efforts.
We therefore plan to work in such a way that, even with the liberal discount that nature will surely apply to our returns, there may be left a real measure of benefit gained without undue cost. Many of the young will be lost from falling upon unsuitable bottoms and from many other unfavorable conditions, such as confront every young mussel in nature with more or less frequency. We would like to remove all of the unfortunate conditions productive of loss, both to the mussels that we put out and to those that are propagated entirely by natural means; but this, of course, is not possible. There are, however, artificial conditions which do injury to the younger mussels, and it is both desirable and practicable to prevent such damage as far as can be done reasonably.
RESULTS DEPENDENT UPON PROTECTION.
In the regular fishery for mussels the beds are continually dragged over with rakes, tongs, crowfoot hooks, or dredges. It is inevitable that the young mussels will suffer to some extent from this process. It is quite unnecessary, however, for the "infant" mussels, many of them too small for any use at all and many more too small for any economical or proper use in manufacture, to be entirely removed from the beds. Mussels are thus uselessly destroyed that might be left to grow to a size at which they would be both commercially valuable and properly usable; meantime, too, they might take their natural part in the reproduction of the species.
Furthermore, it would be desirable to leave portions of the rivers entirely undisturbed by the operations of shelling during periods of some years. This would accomplish a double object—it would leave the best conditions for the natural reproduction of the remnant of the old stock and for the growth of the young mussels and at the same time it would create a series of reserves in which artificial propagation could be carried on with the best conditions for maximum results. In such closed regions the young mussels would have to contend against only the normal unfavorable conditions which all mussels have ever had to withstand, without an added toll of destruction being taken by the direct and indirect effect of the operations of men.
The simple "closing" of a depleted region, if the exhaustion has not proceeded too far, may be expected to lead to sure betterment, and even in time, if the closure were for a very long period, to a restoration of the former condition when mussels were so richly abundant. It will be advisable, however, to supplement natural processes by the methods of artificial propagation in order that the [9]replenishment may be hastened and a greater result gained in a shorter time. We have to contemplate that the beds that may be closed will have to be reopened after a definite period, for the fishermen can not afford to work indefinitely on restricted and depleted areas, and the supply of available shells must be maintained. A proper solution as fair as possible to all will be found in a plan of rotation which will give rest periods to the different portions of a river in succession. Let this measure be supplemented as far as may be by Government or State propagation of mussels in the resting regions.
It is apparent that artificial propagation and protection are intimately related. Restrictive measures alone will yield benefits, but these will be greater if the protection is followed up by well-directed propagation. Artificial propagation pursued independently may be expected to bring results, but the advantages will be considerably diminished if no steps are taken to lessen the unnecessary destruction of the young mussels thus given a start upon life.
