FIRST BIENNIAL STATEMENT DO 



necked bird that lives in swamps and eats frogs and 

 fish and things of that kind. If the young starve to 

 death, let our kind-hearted friends establish orphan 

 asylums for them, but still let the herons be killed and 

 put to the only use for which the Lord ever intended 

 them, namely, to decorate the bonnets of our beautiful 

 ladies." 



The scene now shifts to Washington. 

 The estimates of Mr. David F. Houston, Secretary of 

 Agriculture, for the expenditures of his Department during 

 1914-15 as originally sent to Congress contained an item of 

 $100,000 for the enforcement of the national migratory 

 bird law\ By the House Committee on Agriculture that 

 request w T as cut down to $50,000, and an item for that sum 

 passed the House in the Agricultural Appropriation bill. 



When that bill reached the Senate Committee on Agri- 

 culture, by the usual Senate reference, Mr. Beverly T. Gal- 

 loway, then Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, appeared 

 before that Committee and made a statement which was 

 reported upon to the Senate by a Senator from his own 

 state — Arkansas. 



According to the statement of Senator Robinson (Con- 

 gressional Record, May 9, page 8,683), it was Assistant- 

 Secretary Galloway who "before the Senate Committee ad- 

 mitted its unconstitutionality (i. e. the McLean law), and 

 said to the Committee that the validity of the act ought to 

 be determined before any appropriation was made further 

 than the amount necessary to try out fairly the constitu- 

 tionality of the Act. It was in part upon that statement by 

 the representative of the Department of Agriculture, Dr. 

 Galloway, that this amendment ($10,000 instead of 

 $50,000) was inserted." 



It was, therefore, no less a man than an Assistant Sec- 

 retary of Agriculture who discredited the estimate of his 

 chief, and used a long knife on the migratory bird law, at 

 the capitol, at a most critical moment. 



The result was what might have been expected from 

 such an attack. Senator Joe T. Robinson, of Arkansas, 

 moved to strike out the item of $50,000 for the enforce- 

 ment of the migratory bird law which was done. 



