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 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.