St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1895-03-15
PRO RONO WHO.

There is scarcely session of the
legislature that some one is not in
Producing, and too often having
passed, some bill further regulating
and restricting the natural right of
people to take fish from the streams
or lakes, or to kill the wild game
of the woods, prairies, lakes or riv-
ers. For years we have had a fish
commission, with an appendage of
an annual appropriate of five or
more thousand dollars, every dollar
OF which is sedulously expended. A
couple OF years ago an ornate and
extensive, as we'll as expensive. sys-
tenn of game wardens was estab-
Hshed to more carefully protect the
game, and keep the surplus in the
treasury from getting inconveniently
large. Now some fellow wants to
leave only three months in the year
in which wild ducks may be killed.
These laws and the proposed addi-
lions are introduced, committed,
passed, and, as to the appropria-
lions anyway, enforced, without, so
far as we recall, single question
being raised as to what they are for
or who they are for. This passive
acceptance, without question, of laws
restrictive of individual rights and
liberties can only be due to some
survival Of hereditary habits of
thought or concepts of a state that
comes down from the days when our
forefathers regarded the game pre-
serves of their high mightinesses, the
nobility, as a divine sort of an in
stltution, questioned only by the
radicals of those days, the poachers.
AS net result of all this legisla-
ton, we have fish hatchery that is
devoted to Matching the spawn of
trout and other fish, and sending the
young fish out to stock the streams
and lakes of the state. What for
and who for? Public money should
only be used for public purposes.
what public and general good is
served by this expenditure? Eyerv
community has its fishermen, a few
fellows who delight in angling. They
are probably two or three out of
each one hundred. These whin tha
streams for trout, having their
days of fun and their tables re-
plenished, While the other ninetv-
seven people buy the fish thew eat
II they get any. Thrifty farmers.
owning the land through which the
streams flow, have found a profit
III This paternal policy by taxing
the fishers for the privilege of en-
tering their fields.
So 1T is with the game laws that
prohibit the killing of game except
at permitted seasons. These are
solely for the benefit of the very
few, as compared with the whole.
VINO care to hunt. They are not a
greater proportion of the population
than are the fishers; in fact the
Usher is usually the hunter, too. The
multitude neither hunt nor fish. but.
buying in the markets what fish or
game they use, they pay the most of
the cost of providing the sporting
Few With their fun and game. In
It's way, it is precisely the same
use OF the laws of free state for
the same class as are the game laws
and preserves of countries blessed
with people born to superiority and
titles.
Hereditary custom is too strong to
let US hope for any such sensible
action as the repeal of all these
game and fish laws, but it is reason
able to ask the legislature that pro-
Woes the sport to insist, as a mat
ter OF justice to the mass of people
VINO are not sportsmen, but who paw
the fiddler, that those who care to
eaten the fish or kill the game pro-
vlded and sheltered and preserved