think worth while. He can make one or more ponds in which much of the surface water is caught and stored for the subsequent use of his animals, and he can stock this pond with fish for domestic use, or for the market.
On the one hand, what a considerable addition to the food supply of the country would be found in such productive ponds. We are told of the fabulous wealth represented by the American hen[1], and so it may yet be with the American catfish, the buffalo-fish, the sunfishes, or the bass. There is much to indicate that one can raise fish with less trouble and with as much profit as one rears poultry.
On the other hand, if one third of the 6,000,000 American farms had one or more fish ponds, what an enormous amount of water might be temporarily stored in these. It would seem that a positive step of some value would have been taken to prevent the destructive floods, to make more uniform the flow of streams, and thus to better navigation and to keep the soil waste upon the farm. "A fish pond for every farm" might yet become the watch-word for every advocate of improved navigation, flood prevention and soil conservation.
Some Practical Steps
It should not be presumed that a fad is proposed or that a simple nostrum is advocated for the immediate accomplishment of nation-wide benefits. Avenues of progress may be opened without calling for a headlong plunge into them. The incline is upward and probably beset with a common number of obstacles and pitfalls. On the one hand, if fish conservation in public waters can be promoted by broader and more positive efforts than are now generally made, it is necessary that thought and investigation should be applied to distinguish with certainty the ways that are right from the ways that are wrong. On the other hand, if increase of fish through private enterprise is practicable and appropriate, the movement will be but faintly advanced by the mere waving of a banner or a summons to the line. The imprudent are easily induced, but in the field of industry, the better recruits are the wise who look for plans and specifications and consider costs and possible returns.
There are many persons now seriously interested in fish rearing and who want to start a fish pond, or, having one, to make it more productive. They ask for information as to the fish and the conditions; but, at the best, the practical data that government or states can give
- ↑ American poultry products alone are worth half a billion dollars a year: report of Secretary of Agriculture, D. F. Houston, as quoted in the Review of Reviews, March, 1915, p. 266. This figure is more than double that of the potato crop, and approaches the estimate of value of the wheat crop. With the product of 500 millions from domestic poultry, compare the few millions (about twelve) credited to fresh-water fisheries, and based almost entirely upon wild fish.
