BIOGRAPHICAL 41 



otherwise would have been killed and shipped. It recognized 

 the old doctrine of the common law — that wild game belonged 

 to the man who reduced it to possession ; but it recognized also 

 the right of the several states, under their police power, to regu- 

 late the killing and shipping of the game, and the accepted doc- 

 trine that ownership of game rested in the state. 



This was as far as we had gotten under our old, absurd game- 

 warden system. The Lacey act went a step further. It took 

 advantage of this very confusion and lack of uniformity in state 

 laws and forbade the handling in one state of game illegally 

 killed in another. It was a clever use of the blanket utility of 

 the interstate commerce idea. 



Still our game decreased — upland birds and wild-fowl as 

 well. Under our system of license acts we Americans raised 

 nearly two million dollars a year ostensibly to protect our game. 

 We protected our politicians instead. It became obvious that a 

 few more years would see our game wiped out and the wild-fowl 

 shooting pretty much a thing of the past. 



The Lacey bird law did not go far enough, as stated by 

 Emerson Hough. Major Lacey had in mind a migratory 

 bird law; this is hinted at in one of his addresses. He 

 said the government should control migratory birds if it 

 could be done by national legislation. He held that game 

 located in any state is the property of the people of that 

 state. Migratory birds do not belong to any state, and 

 the people of all sovereign states are interested in their 

 protection. Spring shooting he thought should be for- 

 bidden. He was not quite sure that such a law would 

 pass the constitutional requirements. He was at work 

 on this problem at a time when the Lacey bird law was 

 passed and he gave much attention to the subject. Such 

 a law has finally been passed — the Weeks-McLean law. 

 It was Major Lacey wdio started Congress on the right 

 way, assisted by that great Iowan, W. T. Hornaday, who 

 has ever been the great friend of the birds. Thus we 

 have left to the United States Department of Agriculture 



