Alabama, ipi 5. 91 



of a very few real preserves. If my iteration of this fact is likely to 

 be regarded as tiresome, it should be remembered that only the 

 quick awakening of this nation, and the quick application of stern 

 remedies, can save the patient. 



In the protection of wild life, it seems to me that the average 

 citizen does not even begin to realize his own power. I know it, and 

 a. great many other men know it, because we have seen the results 

 that have been accomplished by the private citizen on the firing-line. 

 If the defenders of wild life can succeed in reaching and arousing 

 the private citizen, the wild life of our country can even yet be saved 

 from the general annihilation that threatens it. The appeal for new 

 help must be made to the men and women of America who do not 

 go hunting, and who do not kill wild creatures! 



Speaking generally, I think that we have gone with the gunners 

 about as far as we can. I fear that they will concede no more than 

 they already have conceded, and the new measures they are willing 

 to concede I believe are utterly inadequate to the saving of our wild 

 life. As a class and a mass, the gunners are unwilling to grant long 

 close seasons, of five or ten years, and therefore we must secure 

 those long close seasons without their aid ! 



The accomplishment of a great reform nearly always means the 

 enactment of new laws in the face of strong opposition. Every 

 great reform always treads on a great many toes ; and the owners 

 of many of those toes will not only cry out, but many of them will 

 fight. A bill to stop the sale of game always arouses the opposition 

 of the market-gunners, the game-dealers and the hotel and restau- 

 rant interests. The game-dealers are natural fighters, and in fighting 

 for their selling privileges they hire lawyers in abundance and spend 

 money liberally. As business men, they know how to appeal to the 

 business men in any legislature, and their opposition is a very serious 

 matter. The way to counteract it is to overwhelm it, in the Legisla- 

 ture and before the Governor, with appeals and demands from the 

 press and from men and women who have no selfish interests to 

 serve and no axes to grind, in behalf of imperilled nature. Men who 

 are moved to leave their mirth and their employment, and journey 

 to their State capitol to appear at hearings before committees in 

 behalf of the wild life of the people at large, always command very 

 respectful attention, and in about nineteen cases out of every twenty, 

 if the cause of the people is adequately represented, the friends of 

 wild life do not appeal in vain. 



