WINTER MEETING. 277 



•work of the Neosho station from the original intention, but the Com- 

 TOission is making strenuous efforts to educate the people of the South- 

 west to a knowledge of their true need. The work of the coming 

 year is planned largely upon the original intention. 



Now, it is exceedingly doubtful if within a near-by region it be 

 found possible to establish and maintain a fishery in the sense the term 

 is used in the tidal countries. Such being the case it would be nat- 

 ural for you to ask " what good to us is this expenditure by the Gov- 

 ernment for fish culture work? " Are you aware that at least twenty 

 states, scarcely any one of which possess a fraction of the magnificent 

 water possibilities which the State of Missouri holds in trust for her 

 people, are spending over $100,000 a year in the maintenance of their 

 inland fisheries? Some may put their judgments against the conclu- 

 sions of Congress and twenty Legislatures. You have the possibilities 

 here in the Ozarks not possessed to my knowledge by any state south 

 of Northern Iowa lying between the Mississippi river and Colorado. 

 What if you cannot establish in your streams fisheries on a commercial 

 Ijasis ? So long as you have these splendid water courses running 

 through your State and draining out as much of the strength of your 

 lands as enter into your cereal products it is your imperative duty that 

 a suitable use be made of them. It is a sweet savored saying that he 

 is a benefactor who makes two blades of grass to grow where but one 

 grew. I do not think it possible to make two fishes in our streams 

 where there was one fifty or a hundred years ago, for the conditions 

 liave most materially altered ; but with all the conviction of twenty 

 years of experience, study and observation I have no hesitancy in say- 

 ing that ten pounds of fish can be maintained in our waters where but 

 one pound now exists. 



What good is a mere ten fold of fish among the crowded popula- 

 tion of our State ? I grant you that as an item of food supply it would 

 not be considerable. And yet it is by the rapaciousness of the pres- 

 ent generation that it could not be ten times ten, and it is by the 

 wanton destruction of the past generation that consideration of these 

 subjects is now necessary. 



Putting the possible increaserat the conservative ten-fold, there is 

 abundant need for the work and abundant congratulation if it be car- 

 ried to a successful issue. And the repayment, though it may not 

 come directly to the people in dollars and cents, will be none the less 

 sure and certain. How ? Some of you are anglers. Can any of you 

 forget the keen sense of enjoyment, the bounding of the blood and the 

 rapid beat of the heart, the distension of the nostrils to drink into the 

 tired lungs the pure air of the woods, the quicker flashing of the eye. 



