situation that
it will be easy to "get away" with it.

We could raise two million deer each year on our empty wild lands; but
without fences it would take half a million real game-wardens, on duty
from dawn until dark, to protect them from destructive slaughter. At
present our land of liberty contains only 9,354 game wardens.[J] The
states that contain the greatest areas of wild lands naturally lack in
population and in tax funds, and not one such state can afford to put
into the field even half enough salaried game wardens to really protect
her game from surreptitious slaughter. The surplus of "personal liberty"
in this liberty-cursed land is a curse to the big game. The average
frontiersman never will admit the divine right of kings, but he does
ardently believe in the divine right of settlers,--to reach out and take
any of the products of Nature that they happen to fancy.

[Footnote J: Of this force, there are only 1,200 salaried wardens. The
most of those who serve without salaries naturally render but little
continuous or regular service.]

WILD MEAT AS A FOOD SUPPLY.--We hear much these days about the high cost
of living, but thus far we have made no move to mend the situation. With
coal going straight up to ten dollars per ton, beef going up to fifteen
dollars per hundred on the hoof and wheat and hay going-up--heaven alone
knows where, it is time for all Americans who are not rich to arouse and
take thought for the morrow. _What are we going to do about it_? The
tariff on the coarser necessities of life is now booked to come down;
but what about the fresh meat supply?

I desire to point out that between Bangor and San Diego and from Key
West to Bellingham, our country contains millions of acres of wild,
practically uninhabited forests, rough foot-hills, bad-lands and
mountains that could produce two million deer each year, without
deducting $50,000 a year from the wealth of the country. I grant that in
the total number of deer that would be necessary to produce two million
deer per annum, the farms situated on the edges of forests, and actually
within the forests, would suffer somewhat from the depredations of those
deer. As I will presently show by documentary records, every one of
those individual damages that exceeds two dollars in value could be
compensated in cash, and afterward leave on the credit side of the deer
account an enormous annual balance.

Stop for a moment, you enterprising and restless m