BIOGRAPHICAL 39 



ing the Lacey bird law passed. In an article on game 

 protection he says : 



The question of game protection and the preservation of useful 

 birds has of late years assumed much interest. It has always 

 been the custom to lock the stable door after the horse is gone; 

 our ancestors found the land east of the Ohio covered with a 

 dense forest, the rivers full of fish and the woods filled with 

 game. The abundance of wild life made it seem that the supply 

 could never be exhausted. The first necessity was to destroy the 

 forests so as to make way for the farms. For more than three 

 hundred years destruction was called improvement and it has 

 only in recent years come to the attention of the people generally 

 that the American people were like spendthrift heirs wasting 

 their patrimony. The public conscience has become quickened, 

 and the attempt to preserve and restore some of the wild life of 

 America is no longer looked upon as a fad or idle sentiment. 



The birds keep the balance between the fruitful fields 

 and insects, he argued. He made an early attempt in the 

 year 1900 to nationalize the question of game and bird 

 preservation. The bill met with much derision for a num- 

 ber of years, but the Major persisted, and finally on the 

 25th of May it became a law. 



In this connection Emerson Hough in ''Wealth on 

 Wings" x makes an interesting allusion to the Lacey bird 

 law, as follows : 



It took us all the time from the Articles of Confederation to 

 the year 1913 to grow wise enough to apply to this interstate 

 wealth the doctrine of interstate commerce. Meantime the wealth 

 itself had well-nigh disappeared. 



The wild game of America helped to settle America. In the 

 times when it was hardest for a frontiersman to make a living 

 the wild game helped him out. The rifle went with ax and 

 plow across this continent, and it was the rifle that helped the 

 ax and plow in the earlier days of adversity. At first the Amer- 

 icans valued only the large game ; but in time they began to use 



i The Saturday Evening Post, November 15, 1913. 



