THE GAME BREEDER 



11 



him whenever it gets ready. The courts 

 also hold consistently that the State 

 owns all trees and all lands. Brother 

 Huntington's article shows lack of legal 

 understanding of the proposition, so his 

 attempted differentiation between own- 

 ership of poultry and the State owner- 

 ship of game along legal lines amounts 

 to nothing. And therefore there is no 

 merit to his further statement that in 

 the light of the State's ownership of 

 game it seems reasonable to require that 

 those who rear game exactly similar in 

 appearance to State game should list 

 themselves as licensed breeders and iden- 

 tify the game they send to the public 

 markets, for it would be just as reason- 

 able indeed to require a homesteader 

 who reduced public land to possession to 

 put a tag on it when he sold a load of 

 building sand. . . . He says game bred 

 in a wild state on enclosed farms is 

 more easily stolen and disposed of than 

 poultry. If he means that a pheasant 

 raised in captivity in Indiana could 

 be stolen and marketed more easily, 

 and its marketing would excite less at- 

 tention and suspicion in the absence of a 

 tag, than the marketing of a chicken 

 would excite, he is talking nonsense. 

 The more scarce an article is the more 

 attention the marketing of it will attract. 

 Chickens are more common than game 

 birds. Chickens are more easily obtained 

 than game birds. Therefore the offering 

 of a chicken for sale would occasion less 

 comment and attract less notice than 

 would the offering for sale of something 

 more valuable, like a pheasant, and 

 therefore if tagging has any virtue as a 

 preventative of larceny it is more neces- 

 sary in the case of chickens than in the 

 case of pheasants. The charge of 50 

 cents a year in Ohio, two dollars in Iowa 

 and twenty-five dollars in California, pay- 

 ment of which is required of every per- 

 son who augments the State's wealth by 

 propagating game is an interference with 

 liberty. Requiring a game raiser to ob- 

 tain a permit is as wrong as requiring 

 him to buy a license to engage in game 

 raising. A law requiring a license tends 

 to bring about the extinction of wild life, 

 because it tends to prevent and always 



discourages game raising. In Indiana 

 where no such permit is required, if a 

 farmer's wife finds a sick quail, she cares 

 for and raises birds from it, or liberates 

 it after it is well. If, before feeding it 

 and perhaps putting a splint on its 

 broken leg, she had to wait for the rural 

 carrier, send a letter to the Game Com- 

 missioner, pay a license fee, get a permit 

 and buy a tag, she would "let the bird 

 go." We said in "Game Laws and 

 Game," "It is only by keeping game and 

 game birds that their habits can be 

 studied and that intelligence can be used 

 in determining the best methods of feed- 

 ing, rearing and propagating their kind. 

 The persons who make that study usual- 

 ly do it without the expectation of finan- 

 cial reward. They do it because their 

 intelligence interests them in Hfe of all 

 kinds. They devote time and observa- 

 tion to this study which results in un- 

 told wealth to the State, and any law 

 which discourages them or forbids such 

 study by requiring that they obtain a 

 license — is a law to bring about the ex- 

 tinction of game, because you cannot ex- 

 pect one to devote time and attention 

 to such study and work if he is compelled 

 to obtain a license and to unwind red 

 tape and to pay a fee and buy tags to en- 

 able him to do the work without being 

 fined — a man who wishes to rear wild 

 game should be permitted and encour- 

 aged to do it. He should not be ham- 

 pered or discouraged by any law * *." 

 Friend Huntington continues, "Fruit 

 farmers often use expensive labels to 

 identify their fruit and to advertise their 

 farms." Therefore, "the game farmer 

 should be willing to put inexpensive la- 

 bels * * * on the game he sends to 

 market." Mr. Post of Battle Creek 

 spends thousands of dollars advertising 

 a breakfast food and therefore a farmer 

 who raises corn should be compelled to 

 put a label on every sack he sells. Mr. 

 Gillette puts out fancy labels to adver- 

 tise his razors and Armours use colored 

 posters to work up business for their 

 packing industry and to sell hams, and 

 therefore a woman who raises a chicken 

 in her back yard should be compelled to 

 buy an "inexpensice" tag and place it on 



