The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1910-10-07
animals put together.


e cent magazine article tell you tina
: in Oregon $4,000 pheasant.' wer,
slaughtered in a single day. il
! Louisiana for food and feathers from
quarter of million to a million
$ robins are killed every year, one
champion killing 200 in eight hours
In Tennessee one little hamlet sends
to market 1875, 900 robins, and AGO..
900 humming birds are shipped from
our country annually. A single Chi
cago firm in one year has been known
to handle 80. 900 humming birds in
a single consignment, $4,000 gulls
: and 100000 other BIRDS Good au-
thority puts our total at $50, 10000
, birds a year. The European contin-
ent repeats this and so you have the
women of the civilized world wear
ing 300,000,000 birds every year.
For it remains for womankind, the
oft called gentler sex, to be directly
responsible for the slaughter of
these in9ocents, in almost unbeliev-
able numbers.
| Audubon societies have been or
ganized for the protection of the
birds. Legislatures have enacted
stringent game and song bird laws.
Wardens have been appointed as Wig
liant committees. Fines have been
imposed as checks on such depreda-
lions, but the slaughter still contin-
ues, for here as elsewhere, legisla-
ton is powerless in the face of FASH
ionable womankind.
My faith in woman's inherent JUS
tice and sympathizing gentleness is
supreme and yet her fealty to fash
| ion is causing her to wear like the
savage, the scalps of the slain.
Womankind has stood through
the centuries as embodied tenderness
and sympathy Her gentleness has
made her great; painting and sculp-
ture represent her with deep mater
nal breast within which little child
rem and helplessness everywhere hide
their fearful eye, and the Bible hath
it, that, only the Father above is
tenderer than mother. And now
there is danger that this ideal is to
be slain by woman's own hand for in
this, which is called the Woman's
Century. we are forced to appeal to
the courts of justice to protect one
of the most innocent, beautiful and
useful of Gods creatures against the
cruel vanity of women, and, women
of the Federation, trivial as you may
think the matter, unless you and II
and all good women exert an infiu-
ence against the fashion, ours will
be birdless world.
The press. which has always been
the champion of the helpless and
oppressed, pronounces the wearing !
of these degrading and declares that
women can no longer plead ignorance
OF actual conditions as their excuse
for so doing.
A London clergyman thus address,
ed his congregations: Some of you,
my friends, followers of the gentle
Christ. come to worship wearing aig-
rette plumes. Do you realize that
the aigrette is the maternity plume
OF the white heron, because it only
grows on the bird at the time Of
nesting and to obtain one such fea-
ther involves not only the cruel
death Of the beautiful mother, but
the whole nestful of newly born
birds? What travesty then on re-
ligion to stand and sing. %. fowls
Of the air bless We the Lord, praise
Him and magnify Him forever, and
wear on your hats the badge Of bird
The horrors attending ,
The collection of plumes Of herons is i
Beyond the power Of language to de- &
scribe.
These beautiful plumes cost your
nilliner $32 an ounce. because the
coveted plume is grown only in the
,reeding season, because the mother
'ird who has 1t must be shot without
my hint of sport while actually on @
Ter nest. Each and every aigrette L
+ whatever dyed color and worn by n
owever apparently tender a woman, @
leans the sacrifice of the parent and q
he ruthless desertion of the starv- q,
1g young. For every fifty mothers
lain at least 200 little ones are left p'
> starve. Where once the Florida
'lands were white with aigrettes one
J now rarely seen. A picture by the
reat painter, George Innes, repre-
snts Florida forest interior, with til
solitary aigrette; a prophecy of no al
ght import. OF
~ InrSC <ff 1A-A i rvt