MR. LACEY'S SPEECH ON THE GAME PRESERVE BILL. 



When the bill to convert certain timber 

 reserves into game preserves was before 

 the House of Representatives, Mr. Lacey 

 addressed that body as follows: 



Mr. Chairman : Our ancestors were all 

 killers. Prehistoric man with his club and 

 his stone weapons no doubt exterminated 

 the mammoth. If these cruel forefathers 

 of ours had owned breech loaders the pro- 

 genitors of the horse, the cow, the sheep, and 

 the ox would have disappeared from the 

 earth long before domestication. The boy 

 of to-day is as bloody minded as his naked 

 forefather, and begins to slay the birds and 

 beasts as soon as he can hold a stone in 

 his chubby hands. 



From the days of the troglodyte the un- 

 equal contest has raged. Stone, bronze, 

 iron, hawking, and gunpowder were added 

 to man's power to destroy. Now, with 

 the breech loader and later improved wea- 

 pons, man has become omnidestructive. 

 He goes 500 miles for a day's shooting or 

 half way around the world for a brief hunt- 

 ing and fishing trip. 



The immensity of man's power to slay 

 imposes great responsibilities. 



We are threatened with the probable ex- 

 tinction of many varieties of birds and 

 beasts. A birdless world would be a dreary 

 place to live in and a birdless air would be 

 unfit to breathe. 



The wild pigeon has gone to join the 

 great auk and the dodo in the realm of 

 obliteration. 



We may well pause and consider the sit- 

 uation with which we are confronted. 



I read the other day of a hunt in the 

 South where 2 prominent gentlemen 

 from New York killed 1,600 ducks in 2 

 days, and generously gave them away to 

 show that they were not mere ordinary pot 

 hunters. 



These sanguinary sportsmen should have 

 rather hired out or volunteered to stick 

 pigs for 2 days for the meat packers, 

 where they might have glutted their appe- 

 tite for gore in a more creditable way. The 

 reckless, improvident, and indiscriminate 

 slaughter of our fish in the rivers and the 

 seas only is an illustration of that large 

 waste of our natural resources that is going 

 on in all directions. The natural gas was 

 once worshiped as something supernatural. 

 Now it is used for the most practical of all 

 purposes. It has been recklessly wasted as 

 though it had been infinite in quantity, and 

 •the depleted fields show the results of our 

 extravagance. 



Oil and forests have been extravagantly 

 exploited in the same way. 



197 



Take the State of Texas, where a few 

 months ago we were having many "gush- 

 ers," supplying oil each at the rate of 

 74,000 barrels a day. Now, the news- 

 papers tell us, the oil has ceased to flow. 

 Experience shows that all these resources 

 are limited. 



Oil in Texas may long be pumped, but 

 vast as the supply is it is exhaustible. 



Since I have been in public life I have 

 devoted some part of my time to the sub- 

 ject of the conservation and restoration of 

 our natural resources. This question 

 naturally arises in connection with our 

 public domain. 



It is a shocking thing to see the people 

 of the Pacific coast wantonly engaged in 

 making their opulent salmon streams as 

 desolate and barren as the once prolific 

 Connecticut now is. 



Mankind must conserve the resources of 

 nature. 



When our people were cutting one an- 

 other's throats during the war of 1861 to 

 1865 game in the South became abundant, 

 for men had ceased to hunt anything but 

 human kind ; but when peace came the war 

 against the creatures of the field and forest 

 was again renewed and waged with unre- 

 mitting zeal. 



It is no credit to mankind that animal 

 life is more abundant to-day around the 

 inaccessible poles than anywhere else on 

 the planet. 



Fish in the inhospitable Hudson's bay 

 region are so plentiful that they could not 

 furnish names for them all, and, like the 

 statue to the unknown god at Athens, one 

 of these Canadian fishes was called the 

 "inconnu" or the "unknown" fish. 



The proposed railway to Hudson's bay 

 will change all this. The slaughter will 

 grow furious when "civilization" invades 

 this breeding ground of the Far North. 

 Someone must in these days teach the 

 science of how not to kill. 



There are 46,000,000 acres of our forests 

 now preserved to keep up the supply of 

 water for our rivers. This is a great step 

 in the direction of husbanding Nature's re- 

 sources. Farseeing and practical men saw 

 that a part of the forests must be saved or 

 the remainder of the land would become 

 a desert, and the forest reserves were es- 

 tablished against the protests of the un- 

 thinking. 



A few of the primeval woods remain as 

 reminders ol the past. A Hibernian friend, 

 a genial ex-Congressman from New York, 

 once defined a virgin forest as "a place 

 where the hand of man has never yet set 

 his iostU" This incident shows that the 



