40 American Fisheries Society 



or wipe out the fresh-water pearl material, and you will 

 have the choice of two or three alternatives. You will 

 pay several times the price for an article of equal quality ; 

 you will return to the use of very inferior materials at 

 probably greater cost; or you will adopt a practice that 

 prevails, we are told, in some remote regions of the earth 

 where the buttons are handed down from generation to 

 generation. Let us recognize that our river mussels mean 

 something to a considerable number of fishermen, to 

 manufacturers and to wage earners, and furthermore 

 that they mean something to every citizen of every state 

 in the Union. We must be surprised then to find in every 

 state concerned so little general interest in these public 

 assets, so little feeling of custodianship for a genuinely 

 valuable resource. There exists, not so much a feeling of 

 indifference to the future of the mussel fishery, as an 

 actual condition of misconception of the relative and en- 

 during importance of the mussel beds. It will be the 

 purpose of these remarks to attempt to remove some of 

 the possible misconceptions and to solicit from all those 

 who may have opportunity or influence a more active ef- 

 fort for the adoption of a proper policy in the several 

 states looking to the preservation of the mussel resources 

 while permitting and ensuring the existence of a judi- 

 cious fishery. 



/. Has the mussel industry a permanent character? 



The pearly mussels enter into commerce in a variety 

 of forms, but the principle product is the button. The 

 most recent figures show that about nineteen and one- 

 half millions of dollars worth of buttons of all kinds are 

 manufactured each year in the United States. These are 

 made from a great variety of materials, such as agate, 

 bone, celluloid, glass, horn, metal, fresh-water and ocean 

 pearl, vegetable ivory, etc. Of all the materials, however, 

 the American fresh-water pearl was by far the most im- 

 portant. The only button which anywhere nearly ap- 

 proached the fresh-water button in quantity produced 

 was the shoe button (of all kinds), and it needs no ex- 



