The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1911-10-31
|Cheap Fish For Millions:
What Uncle Sam is Doing to Increase
Our Food Supply
Rx FRANK G.. CARPENTER.

ed-EiSh POnuS 1Or drIuC.o
Moncy in OysterS-The Haibu OF
Alaska and the Whitefish OF the
Great notwithstanding New Fish
From Europe and JAPAN.
Copyright, 1911, by Frank q. Car
penter.)
WASHINGTON, D. G.
Are you Disguised with the hlgn
price of meats?
Do your steaks, chops and roasts
cost more than you can afford?
Are you growing tired Of pouring
your money into the pockets OF our
great butcher barons?
If so, why don't o eat fish? 1t
will make more brain and just as
good muscle. 1t will digest quite as
easily, and taken fresh from the wa
ters, will make you go singing,
through life. The japanese nation,
one Of the happiest on earth, is COM
posed Of fish eaters. The Chinese,
one Of the strongest and thriftiest,
lives largely upon the same food, ana
all over Europe nearly every farmer
has his own private fish pond.
There is no land that will rear fish
better than the United States, and
there is no sort of animal life which
will breed so rapidly nor produce SO
much. Man has but one, two, or at
the utmost three young at a time, and
the same is true of cattle and horses.
Some breeds Of sheep produce twins,
and the hog often has ten or twelve
pigs at a litter. The fish multiplies
by the thousands. The Pacific salmon
has on the average five thousand eggs,
the shad thirty thousand II the cod
is said to drop as many as two mil
lions. Indeed, it has been estimated
that if all the cod Eggs laid in one
year should produce female fish, and
they in turn lay similar eggs, that
within a few years the whole world
would be covered, and VIZ could have
a tower Of eggs reaching from here
to the moon.
All this is preliminary to my story
Of the great work which-our Uncle
Sam Patriarch has under way to in
crease our fish supply.
Planting Fish by the Billions.
During the past week [ have been
talking with the men who run the
fish commission. They have a big of
fee here in Washington, and connect
all over the Union. The Government
now matches fish as farmers hatch
chickens and it's output Of the finny
tribe last year was more than 1000
million. OF these there were some
thing like 200,000,00 salmon, over
s%oo.ooo.ooo whitefsh. ,~soo.ooo,ooo or
700.000,000 pike perch, n almost
200. 900. 900 cod. The white perch
numbered 500, 600, 900, the fiat fish
500. 900, 600. n the Holsters almost
200, 100000. In addition to this there
was an enormous planting OF oysters
and a distribution Of food fishes so
numerous in variety that L cannot
mention them all. Some of these fish
were taken from the Atlantic to the
Pacific, and some were brought from
the great Northwest to Maine and
other States. There are now large
Government batcaeries in tw~enty-sev-
en- different States. and the fish reared
are increasing by the hundreds Of
millions per annum. Since the estab-
lishment OF the bureau, which was
about forty years ago more than 28.-
600 million eggs have been artifcially
I've been the output of the last six
years. / am told also that this work
is at it's beginning and that if our wa
ters are properly stocked and cared
for we may yet shake u fists in the
faces of the packing interests and
live upon fish.
New Fish Laws Needed.
The next Congress will be asked to
make new laws for the protection Of
our fish in the streams and along the
coasts. as well as to the proper man
agement Of our oyster farms. During
my stay in the offices Of the Fish
Commission I had a chat with DR..
Hugh M. Smith, the deputy commits
sioner. DR.. Smith is a high authority
on all such matters. He has travelled
widely over n world OOkln up new
fish and fish products. in order that
they may be t~ransplanted to the Unit
ed States.
He tells me that the States now
have the right to control the protec-
ton n propagation Of the fish with
in their boundaries. He thinks this
should be given over to the National
Government. and says that many Of
the States are allowing their fisheries
to go to ruin. Take the Shad, which
gives us tens of millions of pounds Of
the most delicious food every year. 1t
is the leading fish of our eastern sea-
board. and it runs up the coastal
streams of the Atlantic as the salmon
does up those Of the Pacific. The
Government has been doing what it
can to plant shad. and it has placed
something like 5000 million OF the
young in the various streams. AL
these fish were reared from eggs ia
ken from fish caught for the markets
and the flesh of the fish was eaten