The nation has made up its mind and has expressed its views strongly in Parliament 

 and in the Press. The Trade, by blocking and obstructing every Bill brought 

 forward, and by delaying the final stage with every excuse and scheme and device 

 they could put up, have shown how much they feared the verdict. 



The "Agreed" Bill. 



The promoters of the Bill of 1921 accepted a trade clause in order to obtain 

 some kind of regulation of a traffic which the House, as a whole, plainly abhors. 

 Bills for the absolute and unqualified abolition of the whole traffic in wild birds' 

 plumage have had enormous majorities in both Houses. There is no question 

 but that Parliament and Committee would have preferred to bring into operation 

 a law as strmgent as that which is working to the satisfaction of all concerned in the 

 United States. 



The Grand Committee asked to deal with numberless obstructive " amend- 

 ments " showed no slightest inclination to accept any of them. They listened 

 unmoved to assertions made in support of exempting this, that, or the other bird for 

 the millinery trade. Birds " farmed," birds " domesticated," feathers picked up, 

 feathers from birds considered plentiful, from birds regarded as pests, from birds 

 not killed cruelly, from birds eaten in some part of the world, etc., etc. — the Com- 

 mittee of 1914, the Committee of 1920, and the Committee of 1921 would have none 

 of them. Why? Because they had every reason to distrust trade assertions and 

 intentions, and for desiring a straight, clean Act without loopholes — a law which 

 could not be made a mere shield for the continuance of the existing state of things. 



"The Past should be Forgotten"? 



It, therefore, seems not too unreasonable a request to ask the business men 

 and women engaged in the millinery trades to consider whether they are not placing 

 themselves in a false position and bringing discredit upon those trades by shielding 

 and supporting this traffic. The feather dealers suggest that the story of the past 

 should be forgotten, and their statements as to the present credited. 



There is a good old proverb which says, " If a man deceive me once, shame to 

 him ; if he deceive me twice, shame to me." It is not possible to forget, for instance, 

 the gigantic fraud of the " artificial osprey " carried on for over twenty years, during 

 which time thousands of men and women in the retail trade told a shameless lie m 

 order to palm off the feathers of Egret and Heron upon customers who objected to 

 purchasing the genuine plumes. All manner of materials were cited as composing 

 these indubitably real feathers ; they were flatly affirmed, in shops and in newspaper 

 statements and interviews, to be made in factories that were never located, by workers 



