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.