The Americanization of Edward Bok / The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After

by Edward William Bok

Personally again he sought the most intelligent of his woman-friends, talked with scores of others, and found himself facing the same trait in feminine nature which he had encountered in his advocacy of American fashions. But this time it seemed to Bok that the facts he had presented went so much deeper.

"It will be hard for you to believe," said one of his most trusted woman-friends. "I grant your arguments: there is no gainsaying them. But you are fighting the same thing again that you do not understand: the feminine nature that craves outer adornment will secure it at any cost, even at the cost of suffering."

"Yes," argued Bok. "But if there is one thing above everything else that we believe a woman feels and understands, it is the mother-instinct. Do you mean to tell me that it means nothing to her that these birds are killed in their period of motherhood, and that a whole nest of starving baby-birds is the price of every aigrette?"

"I won't say that this does not weigh with a woman. It does, naturally. But when it comes to her possession of an ornament of beauty, as beautiful as the aigrette, it weighs with her, but it doesn't tip the scale against her possession of it. I am sorry to have to say this to you, but it is a fact. A woman will regret that the mother-bird must be tortured and her babies starve, but she will have the aigrette. She simply trains herself to forget the origin.

"Take my own case. You will doubtless be shocked when I tell you that I was perfectly aware of the conditions under which the aigrette is obtained before you began your exposure of the method. But did it prevent my purchase of one? Not at all. Why? Because I am a woman: I realize that no head ornament will set off my hair so well as an aigrette. Say I am cruel if you like. I wish the heron-mother didn't have to be killed or the babies starve, but, Mr. Bok, I must have my beautiful aigrette!"

Bok was frankly astounded: he had certainly probed deep this time into the feminine nature. With every desire and instinct to disbelieve the facts, the deeper his inquiries went, the stronger the evidence rolled up: there was no gainsaying it; no sense in a further disbelief of it.

But Bok was determined that this time he would not fail. His sense of justice and protection to the mother-bird and her young was now fully aroused. He resolved that he would, by compulsion, bring about what he had failed to do by persuasion. He would make it impossible for women to be untrue to their most sacred instinct. He sought legal talent, had a bill drawn up making it a misdemeanor to import, sell, purchase, or wear an aigrette. Armed with this measure, and the photographs and articles which he had published, he sought and obtained the interest and promise of support of the most influential legislators in several States. He felt a sense of pride in his own sex that he had no trouble in winning the immediate interest of every legislator with whom he talked.

Where he had failed with women, he was succeeding with men! The outrageous butchery of the birds and the circumstances under which they were tortured appealed with direct force to the sporting instinct in every man, and aroused him. Bok explained to each that he need expect no support for such a measure from women save from the members of the Audubon Societies, and a few humanitarian women and bird-lovers. Women, as a whole, he argued from his experiences, while they would not go so far as openly to oppose such a measure, for fear of public comment, would do nothing to further its passage, for in their hearts they preferred failure to success for the legislation. They had frankly told him so: he was not speaking from theory.

In one State after another Bok got into touch with legislators. He counselled, in each case, a quiet passage for the measure instead of one that would draw public attention to it.

Meanwhile, a strong initiative had come from the Audubon Societies throughout the country, and from the National Association of Audubon Societies, at New York. This latter society also caused to be introduced bills of its own to the same and in various legislatures, and here Bok had a valuable ally. It was a curious fact that the Audubon officials encountered their strongest resistance in Bok's own State: Pennsylvania. But Bok's personal acquaintance with legislators in his Keystone State helped here materially.