LET US GO AFIELD 



of the states that is to say, against their own in- 

 dividual and selfish personal folly. We had nothing 

 except the Lacey Act that could be called a national 

 game law. So we resorted once more to the involu- 

 tions of the Interstate Commerce Law. Congress 

 passed the so-called Weeks-McLean Law, the sim- 

 plest and most obvious national measure that could 

 well be devised. It sidestepped the whole proposi- 

 tion of state rights and personal liberty, and ad- 

 dressed itself to the preservation of the commodity 

 that beyond all others is interstate essentially and 

 irrevocably such. 



This act of Congress did not undertake to cross 

 state lines and tell how the local or upland game 

 should be protected ; but, taking this broad country 

 just as the wildfowl themselves take it, without any 

 visible state lines, it undertook to protect our migra- 

 tory birds. 



This law passed over to the Department of Agri- 

 culture the regulation of the use of that form of 

 our natural resources which is transient and migra- 

 tory. We do not really own that wealth, even as a 

 nation. It is raised in these days almost wholly out- 

 side our national confines. Canada raises most of 

 the wildfowl we kill today, and in return we not 

 only give Canada no reciprocity, but, on the other 

 hand, for generations we have done all we could to 



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