Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JANUARY 29, 1898 
Terms, $4- a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 
S:x Months, $2. f 
1 
VOL. L.-NO. ,■). 
No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
CONGRESS AND THE GAME. 
Senator Teller last week introduced his game meas- 
ure to regulate the transportation of game. It is in 
effect the bill which was commented upon in our issue 
of Oct. 23, when we pointed out that as then worded 
it appeared to be based up©n a mistaken premise that 
the individual States were powerless, because lacking 
constitutional authority, to enact and enforce non-export 
game laws. Doubtless Senator Teller has given careful 
consideration to this phase of the question, and has con- 
cluded that his bill comes within the jurisdiction of 
Congress. We are led to infer as much from the altered 
text. If it shall be demonstrated that Congress may 
thus give into the control of the Interstate Commerce 
Commission the regulation of traftic in game between 
the States, Senator Teller's measure will have a far- 
reaching influence in supplementinf^ the non-export 
laws now on the statute books. Its enforcement will do 
more for game preservation than almost any other prac- 
ticable expedient conceivable, for it will mean carrying 
out the principle of stopping the sale of game; and it 
will cut off from the New York, Boston and other mar- 
kets their illicit supplies of deer, grouse and quail which 
are now transported in such tremendous volume, in 
violation of the laws of the States .vhere the .game is 
killed. We trust that Congress ma's' take early action 
in the matter. The existence of such a law would give 
heart to the workers in the cause the country over. The 
full text of the measure follows : 
S. 3257. In the Senate of the United States, Jan. 18, 1898, Mr. 
Teller introduced the following bill, which was read twice and 
referred to the Committee on Interstate Commerce: A Bill to 
regulate the shipment of wild game from one State to another: 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled. That it shall 
be unlawful for any railroad company, express company or other 
common carrier, or its officers, agents or servants, to receive tor 
shipment or transportation, or for any person or corporation to 
ship or offer to any common carrier for shipment, from any place 
within any of the States or Territories of the United States or Di,s- 
ti-ict of Columbia, to any place without any of the States or 
Territories of the United States or District of Columbia, or to 
any foreign country, for sale, for market, or for storage, any 
moose, elk, deer, buffalo or bison, caribou, antelope, mountain 
sheep or mountain goats, or any parts thereof, or any wild turkey, 
prairie chicken or pitinated grouse, sage hen, Mongolian or ring- 
neck pheasant, grouse, pheasant or partridge, quail, wild goose, 
duck, brant, swan, woodcock, snipe, rail, plover or other water- 
fowl; provided, that nothing herein contained shall prohibit the 
shipment of any wild game, animals or birds, or parts of the 
same, that may be expressly authorized or permitted by the laws 
of the State in and from wh.ch the shipment is made, if the same 
is conspicuously labeled "wild game," on which label shall be 
stated the kind and quantity of said wild game, animals or parts 
of the same, and the date and place of shipment, and the name or 
names of both the consignor and the consignee, a copy of which 
label shall be kept on file by the common carrier at the place 
from which said wild game, animals or birds, or parts of same, 
are shipped. 
Sec. 2. That any person or corporation guilty of violating the 
provision of this section shall, upon conviction, be punished as 
provided in section 10 of the act to regulate interstate commerce; 
and the interstate Commerce Commission is hereby given juris- 
diction in the matter of the transportation of game as m other 
matters affecting traffic between the States. 
FADS AND FIELD SPORTS. 
To THOSE creatures of spare money, idle moments 
originality and energy called fads, some wise and useful! 
others silly and worthless, much credit is due for useful 
improvement in the wholesome diversions and recrea- 
tions of social life, and in the improvement of the me- 
chanics and arts, though there are people who consider 
all fads as being of idle purpose, frivolous things on 
which energy is frittered away, or on which both time 
and money are idly expended if the fads be expensive. 
Nevertheless the restless genius of the faddist has done 
much for the progress of the world in general and for 
the sporting world in particular. He is often a pioneer 
in social or mechanical progress. Be investigates and 
experiments and practices the fad which appeals to his 
peculiar bent of mind, though as in all other interests of 
life there will be a large part whimsical, or freakish, or 
useless, so far as public benefit is concerned. 
Things novel and peculiar are generally considered 
as being fads, though they may possess genuine merit, 
and having it the public may be slow to give it recogni- 
tion and approval; on the other hand, the public may go 
to an extreme in its enthusiasm and use of what at first 
was considered a fad, for it is a plodding world, one so 
from necessity and habit, moving in conventional chan- 
nels and acting in set forms, so that it has but little time 
for entertaining novelties which are not tried and proved 
useful; if the novelty is so pi'oved, public approbation 
may go to excess. 
The public, once it adopts a fad, makes a general use 
and application of it regardless of its special value in 
a limited field, and this is none the less true of the sport- 
ing world, in which fads flourish notably well. The use 
of full-choke guns, for instance, a few years since for 
all kinds of shooting, whether of open or covert, became 
general, and indeed has not yet entirely passed away, 
though the special fitness of the choke-bore and cylinder- 
bore guns in their special fields of usefulness are now 
better understood and recognized. 
The swift and wide-ranging dog, of stylish dash, whose 
speed was at the highest whether working in open 01 
covert, was a popular public fad for many years, and 
fashion decreed that such dogs, if setters, must be black, 
white and tan, and it happened that many well-bred set- 
ter puppies were killed for the one reason that they were 
not of that color. The back-wash of that silly fad still 
lingers. There are a few men who still believe or affect 
to believe that great pace is the proper thing for every 
kind of field shooting, regardless of conditions and in- 
telligent adaptation of means to ends, and that black, 
white and tan constitute the only true and useful color. 
To enumerate all the fads of the sporting world would 
be to make a minute criticism on the transformation 
stages of progress, yet out of all the fads something of 
permanent value has been contributed by each; How- 
ever much a thing of true merit may be misapplied for 
a time, there is always a tendency to a recovery of sen- 
sible application and a resulting and lasting benefit from 
the thorough investigation and experience. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
The German expression "What's loose?" has point 
now as to the business management of New York's fish 
and game interests. The Legislature has spent the sum 
of $41,858.48 on the first annual report of the Fisheries, 
Game and P'orestry Commission, issued last year as the 
most expensive single volume ever published by the 
State, and probably by any vState. And while 
the fortunate recipients of this $42,000 work of art 
have been admiring its colored pictures, the Com- 
mission has been suspending from duty some of its 
most efiicient game protectors, because there is no 
money in the treasury to pay them. Suits have been 
abandoned, perfectly good cases have been thrown up, 
law violators have been granted immunity, and breaking 
of the game laws goes on unchecked, because the money 
which the Legislature should have devoted to protective 
purposes has been squandered in needless expenditures. 
If the reports which are to follow are to be kept up to 
the expansive and expensive character of the last one, 
there will come a time when it will cost so much to re- 
port what has been done that there will be nothing left 
with which to do anything to be reported. 
The deferring of action by the President as to the ap- 
pointment of the individual who the other day sat him- 
self down in the chair of the Commissioner, to see how 
the promised place would suit him, prompts indulgence 
of a hope that Mr. McKinley may have reconsidered 
his intention of delivering the United States Fish Com- 
mission over to an unworthy because ignorant and legal- 
ly disqualified political appointee. Thi^ is to say that we 
trust that the President may yet resolve in this matter to 
take the only course which is open to him with honor 
and name for the place a person fitted by knowledge, 
acquirements and training to fill it. In such a momen- 
tous concern as this the Chief Executive should comply 
with the letter and the spirit of the statute. The law ex- 
pressly says that the Commissioner shall be "a person 
of scientific and practical acquaintance with the fish 
and fisheries." It has been given out by Senator Elkins 
that his man has been for several months studying up on 
fishculture, and that he is bright and will soon learn- 
and therefore is qualified as the law directs. To have 
kept silence would have been a more decent course. Sen- 
ator Elkins knows that studying up on fishculture in no 
way qualifies within the meaning of the law; he knows 
that the President knows this; and he knows that the 
President knows that the public knows it. To talk as 
he does about "reading up" is an insult to the President 
and an affront to the people. It is an insult to the Pres- 
ident because its effect is to make the President a party 
with him to the contemptuous derision and flouting of 
the law. Mr. McKinley may have made an injudicious 
promise of the Fish Commissionership to the West Vir- 
ginia Senator, as Herod promised to the daughter of 
Herodias the head of John the Baptist on a charger, 
and like Herod, although regretting his oath, he may 
consider himself bound to fulfill it. He may feel himself 
under obligations, for personal reasons, to deliver over 
the Commission as spoils, but it is inconceivable that he 
should share the impudent flippancy exhibited by Mr. 
Elkins, and willingly be made to pose with him in any 
such biting of the thumb at the public. 
When we have at Washington in the highest depart- 
ments of the Government such examples of flagrant dis- 
regard of law and the people's rights in connection 
with fishing interests, we should not expect a high code 
of morals to govern mere private citizens who are 
prompted by greed to defy the game laws. There is 
really little distinction in morals between ihe Fish Com- 
mission grabbing by a United States Senator and the 
Jackson's Hole elk grabbing by a New York speculator 
in live game. The only remedy in cither case is the 
arousing of a public sentiment which shall protest so 
vigorously that the grabbers may be frightened into 
dropping their plunder, and those in authority may be 
frightened into doing their plain duty. In letters just 
received from Jackson's Hole correspondents tell us that 
prompted by the protests the Forest and Stream has 
made against the unlawful capture and shipping of elk 
from the valley, petitions have been circulated, public 
sentiment expressed, and such agitation made as prom- 
ises to put an end to the illicit traffic. It appears that 
Manager Glidden of the Moose Head Ranch, in addition 
to having secured from the authorities special permis- 
sion, to violate the laws of the State, succeeded in some 
way in having himself appointed a deputy game warden 
— a delightful modern instance of th; fox made goose- 
herd. This was too much for the Jackson people, who 
united in a petition to the Governor spraying that the 
Glidden special permits to violate the anti-elk-shipping 
law might be revoked and his commission as deputy 
game warden rescinded. It was pointed ovit that he was 
not a resident of the State, and that a person who was 
engaged in the capture of live game for export might 
be assumed under the ordinary processes of the human 
composition to administer his office in a way more use- 
ful to him and his game enterprises than to the people 
of Wyoming. Protest and petition have done their work. 
It was currently reported at the Sportsmen's Exposition 
last week that papers were served upon Mr. Glidden 
in the Madison Square Garden, canceling both his war- 
den commission and his special permit to violate the 
Wyoming game law. Whether the papers were served 
is immaterial, since a sentiment has been aroused in 
Jackson's Hole which is not likely to permit further 
illegal export of game. 
When one comes to think of it, what a travesty it is 
that the Governor of Wyoming should be among the 
signers of a call for a national sportsmen's association, 
with headquarters in far-away New York. Here is the 
executive of a Western State, by whose consent or in 
contempt of whose authority a live game speculator suc- 
ceeds in open, advertised and boastfully heralded viola- 
tion of the laws; here is an executive who cannot or 
does not protect the game in his own State, assuming 
to shoulder with others the easier task of protecting the 
game of the entire continent. 
We print elsewhere Secretary Arthur F. Rice's report 
of the formation of a League of American Sportsmen. 
The programme calls for a national organization, with 
State divisions, game wardens, secretary-treasurers and 
deputy wardens in every county of every State, who are 
to be awarded $10 for every conviction secured, the funds 
for this purpose to come presumably from the member- 
ship fee of a dollar, exacted of everybody except min- 
isters and teachers. Estimates have been published that 
the organization will have $100,000 in the treasury the 
first year. The scheme is a beautiful one on paper. 
There is perennial glamonr about this visionary plan 
of a national sportsmen's association. But no practical 
accomplishment has ever been achieved by any of the 
movements of this kind, further than to promote per- 
sonal interests of individuals connected with them. There 
is no reason to believe that in this respect the new organ- 
ization will differ from the others. 
