Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation

by William T. Hornaday

This is no cause for surprise, or wonder. In this twentieth century money is essential to every great enterprise, whether it be for virtue or mischief. The enemies of wild life, and the people who support them, are very powerful. The man whose pocket or whose personal privilege is threatened by new legislation is prompted by business reasons to work against you, and spend money in protecting his interests.

Now, it happens that the men of ordinary means who have nothing personal at stake in the preservation of wild life save sentimental considerations, cannot afford to leave their business more than three or four days each year on protection affairs. Yet many times services are demanded for many days, or even weeks together, in order to accomplish results. Bad repeal bills must be fought until they are dead; and good protective bills must be supported until the breath of life is breathed into them by the executive signature.

With money in hand, good men aways can be found who will work in game protection for about one-half what they would demand in other pursuits. With the men whom, you really desire, sentiment is always a controlling factor. It is my inflexible rule, however, in asking for services, that men who give valuable time and strength to the cause shall not be allowed to take their expense money from their own pockets. Soldiers on the firing line cannot provide the sinews of war that come from the paymaster's chest!

Campaigns of publicity are matters of tremendous necessity and importance; but their successful promotion requires hundreds, or possibly thousands of dollars, for each state that is covered.

I believe that the wealthy men and women of America are the most liberal givers for the benefit of humanity that can be found in all the world. New York especially contains a great number of men who year in and year out work hard for money—in order to give it away! The depth and breadth of the philanthropic spirit in New York City is to me the most surprising of all the strange impulses that sway the inhabitants of that seething mass of mixed humanity. Every imaginable cause for the benefit of mankind,—save one,—has received, and still is receiving, millions of gift dollars.

Some enterprises for the transcendant education of the people are at this moment hopelessly wallowing in the excess of wealth that has been thrust upon them. Men are being hired at high salaries to help spend wealth in high, higher, highest education and research. It is now fashionable to bequeath millions to certain causes that do not need them in the least! In education there is a mad scramble to educate every young man to the topmost notch, often far above his probable station in life, and into tastes and wants far beyond his powers to maintain.

In all this, however, there would be no cause for regret if the wild life of our continent were not in such a grievous state. If we felt no conscience burden for those who come after us, we would not care where the millions go; but since things are as they are, it is heartbreaking to see the cause of wild-life protection actually starving, or at the best subsisting only on financial husks and crumbs, while less important causes literally flounder in surplus wealth.

This regret is intensified by the knowledge that in no other cause for the conservation of the resources most valuable to mankind will a dollar go so far, or bring back such good results, as in the preservation of wild life! The promotion of "the Bayne bill" and the enactment of the Bayne law is a fair example. That law is to-day on the statute books of the State of New York because fifty men and women promptly subscribed $5,000 to a fund formed with special reference to the expenses of the campaign for that measure; and the uplift of that victory will be felt for years to come, just as it already has been in Massachusetts.

At one time I was tempted to show the financial skeleton in the closet of wild-life protection, by inserting here a statement of the funds available to be expended by all the New York organizations during the campaign year of 1911-1912. But I cannot do it. The showing is too painful, too humiliating. From it our enemies would derive too much comfort.

Even in New York State, in view of the great interests at stake, the showing is pitiful. But what shall we say of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Jersey, and a dozen other states where the situation is much worse? In the winter of 1912 a cry for help came to us from a neighboring state, where a terrific fight was being made by the forces of destruction against all reform measures, and in behalf of retrogression on spring shooting. The appeal said: "The situation in our legislature is the worst that it has been in years. Our enemies are very strong, well organized, and they fight us at every step. We have no funds, and we are expected to make bricks without straw! Is there not something that you can do to help us?"