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 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.