Aug. 2, 1913. 
FOREST AND STREAM 
139 
The Feather Trade. 
Tompkins Corners, N. Y., July 14. —Editor 
Forest and Stream: Do the red-blooded sports¬ 
men of America intend to submit without pro¬ 
test to the threatened action of the United States 
Senate which, in effect, provides for the exter¬ 
mination of the world’s most interesting species 
of birds? Are they going to confirm the occas¬ 
ional accusation that they are interested in nature 
only as the East Side gunman is interested in a 
“place” which he can “shoot up” ? Do they 
mean to admit that their interest is ignorant, 
narrow and provincial? If they do not, they 
must make themselves heard in this crisis which 
threatens with extermination many of the world’s 
choicest species. 
The picture is not a pleasant one, but duty 
requires its contemplation. In imagination we 
will transport ourselves to some tropic “isle where 
every prospect pleases and only man is vile.” We 
see there, far from human habitation, a bird 
whose splendid plumage seems direct from fairy¬ 
land. It is, perhaps, with its mate, the last of 
its race, save the brood of nestlings whose joy¬ 
ous clamor is heard as the parents approach the 
nest with food. But with such a survival in this 
remote place the race may continue and multi¬ 
ply, to the delight and wonder of countless gen¬ 
erations of men. Vain hope! The destroyer is 
at hand, the vile man who is seeking out these 
very birds to kill. We see him approach with 
the form of an ape, the intellect of a rat and 
the pity of a snake. He is spreading his snares 
to capture and kill those birds. He is clothed 
with a smear of rancid fat. About him is an 
odor of rum and other odors of unfragrant kind. 
But you must suppress that gesture of disgust. 
This gentleman surely has claims to respect. He 
is a drunken, foul-smelling, dirty barbarian, a 
liar, a thief and a murderer, but that is not all. 
He is, may it please you, the agent of “the 
American feather trade,” that potent organiza¬ 
tion which claims that it is able to control the 
Senate of the United States in the face of the 
wishes of all the humane people of that country. 
“The American feather trade” is the connecting 
link which puts him in exalted company. Show 
him the respect which is his due. 
He has all the cunning of his masters. His 
snare has been successful. He has the bird. 
Gripping its fluttering, anguished form in his 
dark, sinewy hands, he tears the skin from the 
living body which, crushed and crippled, he flings 
aside to be eaten alive by the hordes of ants, 
ravenous and pitiless as the men who furnished 
them their living feast. The hunter sits down 
and howls with glee, tie has killed the last bird 
of a splendid species, and his generous New 
York master—the embalmer of birds and friend 
of Senators—will give him enough for his work 
to keep him drunk a month. And how proud 
Mrs. Smith will be to be able to show that Jones 
woman that she can wear a bird on top of her 
head which the Jones woman cannot! “The 
feather trade” has killed all of that kind in the 
whole world, and this is the very last. So there. 
Feiner & Maass, attorneys for “the feather 
trade,” have told the Senate that they represent 
an American industry which must not be dis¬ 
turbed. D. Lefkowitz, P. Adelson, J. Engle, P. 
Meuer and a few other prominent Americans 
have established an industry for which the tender 
care of the United States Senate is demanded. 
This industry, in its first stages, consists in 
setting such agents as we have seen at such work 
as that described. The next is fashioning the 
ghastly relic to a shape which they can persuade 
a vain woman will be a distinct advertisement 
that she “has the price”; next, collecting from 
the woman's unfortunate husband, and finally, 
retaining Feiner & Maass to show the United 
States Senate how to make laws. 
This is no fancy sketch. This sordid tragedy 
is going on in many lands at this very moment. 
Ten thousand birds, killed with every form of 
revolting cruelty, must die to-day to fill the de¬ 
mands of “the feather trade.” Unless prompt 
action is taken, every year will see the absolute 
extermination of more species. What good, what 
decent excuse can be given for continuing this 
shameful massacre? 
Can any humane, high-minded man who 
claims the name of sportsman sit still and see 
this revolting cruelty, this blotting out of species 
without uttering his protest? If he sits still and 
does nothing, every man expecting somebody else 
to act, the birds are doomed. If every sup¬ 
porter of Wilson, Roosevelt and Taft had gone 
fishing instead of voting last November, Debs 
would now be president. Every sportsman who 
reads this paper has as many votes as D. Lef¬ 
kowitz and has as much right to ask his Senator 
that the birds of the world shall live as the 
latter has to demand that they shall die. Let 
him at once and without fail write to both the 
Senators from his State and tell them as for¬ 
cibly as he can what he thinks of the whole 
situation. Let him demand that the wishes of 
the American people shall be permitted to find 
expression. Inform them that D. Lefkowitz is 
not the whole show. Ask for a reply and file 
that reply for future reference. 
Thomas M. Upp, 
National Organizer, Order of Backwoodsmen. 
The Protection of Wild Birds. 
New Salem, Mass., July 9.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: In your communication from Game 
Commissioner Bradley, of Minnesota, inclosing a 
letter from the Senator, who is the author of the 
Clapp amendment, it is stated that the Clapp 
amendment to Schedule N would not work 
against the wild bird life of our own country, 
although Senator Clapp admits that “it might en¬ 
courage the killing of birds in foreign countries.” 
What have the millinery agents of the 
United States done for the country, or for the 
world, that they now demand the privilege of 
continuing to aid in the further extermination 
of the avi-fauna of the world? Was ever a 
greater wrong perpetrated for a smaller reason? 
Are feathers, other than ostrich and domestic, 
used in millinery particularly desired by women? 
Do women use the marabou feathers, knowing 
and realizing that the price paid is the exter¬ 
mination of a species of stork, the emblem of 
motherhood? No. They are fooled in millinery 
stores with the talk of clerks who have been 
fooled by employers, who have been fooled by 
wholesalers, who have been fooled by importers. 
Or, if they are not all fooled, they act as if 
they were for the sake of a litle share of profit, 
most of which goes to some importers in New 
York, who, with their profits in taking the 
world’s birds, are now able to employ counsel 
able enough to fool United States Senators. 
The Clapp amendment to Schedule N would 
let in through our ports the feathers of birds 
used for food and of pest birds. Imagine a cus¬ 
tom house official deciding on each particular 
case of feathers imported, whether the defunct 
bird, which formerly wore them, was considered 
a “pest” or a “food.” It is to laugh. 
As to the Clapp amendment lessening “to 
some extent the temptation to kill birds in our 
own country,” Dr. Field, the Massachusetts game 
commissioner, testified before the Congressional 
committee that during the past five years the 
commission had been obliged to prosecute over 
seventy-five milliners for selling native bird 
plumage. This in Massachusetts. The chief de¬ 
fense of the milliners was that they couldn’t 
tell the difference between native birds’ plumage 
and foreign. Bluebirds and all manner of beau¬ 
tiful birds were found to be shot in this coun¬ 
try and shipped abroad to be made up in London 
and Paris and returned to be sold, even in Mass¬ 
achusetts, where I assure you the women do not 
want to buy birds’ plumage when it means ex¬ 
termination if they know it. Neither do the 
women of Minnesota. 
No one wants the birds of the world exter¬ 
minated; no one has the least need for them in 
millinery, excepting the importers, the milliners’ 
agents, and the few poor classes of men who 
eke out a poor living by cruelly pursuing them 
in their nesting times, when their feathers are 
brightest, and when they are tamed through the 
influence of love. 
There are ornaments plenty that are being 
manufactured for women’s hats, and their use 
gives employment to another set of workers 
and profits to another set of millinery men and 
women. The only reason for the millinery trade 
being stirred over the attempt to save wild birds 
is that the importers of the wild birds are waxed 
so rich that they have the money to stir the 
trade with, also the money to hire counsel that 
can stir even the Senate. Our latest advices 
stated that the whole of Schedule N had been 
stricken out, excepting that regarding egrets, 
and this simply because the importers who are 
interesting themselves are not the ones who are 
interested in egret trade. 
E. O. Marshall, 
Secretary of the Massachusetts Grange Com¬ 
mittee on Protection of Wild Birds. 
