The Hope pioneer. [volume] (Hope, N.D.) 1882-1964, 1913-04-17
TO stop SLAUGHTER
Audubon Societies Want Tariff
Wall to Bar Out Aigrettes.
National Association Demands Action
on Part OF Ways and Means Com
mittee-Seek to End Destruc-
ton of Beautiful Herons.

New York.-Backed by farmers,
sportsmen and women's clubs in
every section of the country, officers
of the National Association of Audi.
bon Societies have demanded of the
ways and means committee of con.
gress an opportunity to urge a prohib.
tive tariff on aigrette feathers at the
hearing on schedule N, which will be
held before the end of this month.
Opposing the moneyed interests OF
the millinery wholesalers, whose in.
roads on the valuable bird life of New
York, Louisiana, Missouri, New Jersey,
Oregon and California have already
forced these states to pass laws ma
king contraband the sales of these
plumes, the national Audubon delega-
ton will ask that they be excluded
from the whole country in the interest
OF everyone dependent upon its agri.
cultural prosperity.
The Federation of Women's Clubs
and organizations of grangers in al.
most every state, as we'll as the Camp.
fire club, the New York Geological so.
ciety, the Long Island Sportsmen's as.
ISOLATION, the American Game Protec-
i've association and other bodies Of
sportsmen, have pledged their support
to this movement.
Data, compiled from scientific obser.
walton of a flock of the few herons
that still survive the wholesale butch
cry of professional plume hunters in an
breeding rookery in Florida,
are being prepared to demonstrate to
congress that these rare birds are a
considerable factor in the destruction
of field mice, gophers, grasshoppers
and other agricultural pests.
While in some instances they have
been found to devour an occasional
trout, their regular diet is proved to
consist principally of minnows, suck
ers and other useless fish, as we'll as
water snakes. that r known to de-
stroy great quantities of trout eggs
and valuable young fish. Other proof
of the natural need of farmers and
fishermen for the beautiful birds that
the milliners have almost driven 20
extinction will be presented by repre-
sentatives of these interests.
Following the recent introduction
by Senator Root of a resolution en-
towering the president of the United
States to call an international con-
gress on bird protection, representa-
tives of the world powers actively en-.
gagged in saving the are species that
is being massacred for their. aigrette
plumes are expressing to the Au-
dubon organization their support of
this movement.
While the whole globe is at present
secured for these trophies, taken from
butchered mother birds for market
here, a tariff ban would do much to-
ward saving the beautiful heron from
worldwide destruction, it is asserted.
With the people of the United
States of almost every class united to
bar from our country the aigrettes of
the unfortunate heron, we expect to
meet the big millinery interests in
sole opposition before the congress
| sional committee" said T. Gilbert
Pearson, secretary of the National AS
sociation of Audubon Societies, at it's
headquarters, 1874 Broadway.
1.-The slaughter of these useful and
beautiful birds is a commercial matter
only to the men who sell their scalps
in those states where this shameful
traffic is not already forbidden by law.
Congress should certainly recognize
the sentiment and interests of the
whole people, who ask it to end this
Importation as a matter of humanity
as we'll as economic and agricultural
benefit"