Birds and the Fruit-Farm 285 



killed. The mayor of the city, who was away at 

 the time, was so disgusted at what had occiirred 

 that he resigned his office upon his return.'* This 

 delightful bit of history graces the pages of a bird 

 report in a distant State." 



Shall all the birds be destroyed? Shall farmers 

 and fruit-growers help the destruction and stand 

 the loss? How many millions of dollars? Far 

 more than the value of all the products of all the 

 fruit sections in America. Do steel-manufac- 

 ttirers combine for their own interests? Does the 

 Standard Oil look out for its own? Does the paper- 

 trust, the lumber-trust, the cotton-trust, the book- 

 trust, the woolen-trust, the steel-trust, and so on to 

 the end of the trusts, if an end there be? Do farm- 

 ers and fruit-growers look diligently out for their 

 own interests? Would the Standard Oil, that finely 

 organized and well managed concern, deliberately 

 refuse to omit anything, however laborious, which, 

 if done, would add to Standard Oil values? But 

 farmers and fruit-growers kill the birds that feed 

 them. They depend upon their labor and their 

 crops; they work; they think they work harder 

 than any other workers in America. Yet they kill, 

 or permit to be killed, the chief source of their 

 wealth, — the birds. Indeed, of all the people on 

 this planet, farmers do the least in their own in- 

 terests. They refuse to get out of time-worn ruts. 

 They are suspicious of everybody. They kill their 



^ Report, Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, January 15, 1912, 

 p. 28. 



