172 ABOUT THE GAME LAWS, ETC. 
tion under any of its clauses—and who among us does 
not see it repeatedly disregarded and the offenders 
silently condoned? And why?” 
Then again— 
«Enforce the gamelaw. Let it not be said that the 
great prairies of Dakota, which twenty years ago was 
the natural home of countless thousands of the finest 
breeds and kinds of wild animals and birds to be found 
on the North American continent should in so short 
space of time fall even behind New Jersey with its 
ground hogs, snipe and reed birds as an attraction to 
the admirers of wild things.” 
This letter was written two years after the great boom 
of ’84 that had brought so many intending settlers with 
guns in their hands and each seeming anxious to gratify 
their animal killing propensity to its uttermost limit. 
And if this was not enough—came the swarms of 
would-be wolfers who purchased their strychnine at $8 
per case, and costing so little—covered it over the wide 
prairies with unstinted hands. The meat was poisoned ; 
the animals were poisoned; the grass was poisoned; 
the birds were poisoned and the whole plain seemed a 
skeleton covered Golgotha. 
Since the date of the foregoing communication of 
territorial days, while the game laws as amended are 
much improved, even though passing the gauntlet of 
hostility of the professional political grafter of the Jud 
LaMoure type—a man who could see little merit in any 
measure that he was not sponsor for. This brainy sen- 
ator with a long legislative experience anda patient 
constituency to bear with his excentricities—has for 
