ching
importance of the measure, and they supported it, with money and
enthusiasm.

The members of the legislature received thousands of letters from their
constituents, asking them to support the Bayne-Blauvelt bill. They did
so. On its passage through the two houses, only _one_ vote was recorded
against it! Incidentally, every move attempted by the Army of
Destruction was defeated and in the final summing up the defeat amounted
to an utter rout.

In 1912, after a tremendous struggle, the legislature of Massachusetts
passed a counterpart of the Bayne law, and took her place in the front
rank of states. That was a great fight. The market-gunners of Cape Cod,
the game dealers and other interests entered the struggle with men in
the lower house of the legislature specially elected to look after their
interests. Just as in New York in 1911, they proposed to repeal the
existing laws against spring shooting and throw the markets wide open to
the sale of game. From first to last, through three long and stormy
months, the Destroyers fought with a degree of determination and
persistence worthy of a better cause. They contested with the Defenders
every inch of ground. In New York, the Destroyers were overwhelmed by
the tidal wave of Defenders, but in Massachusetts it was a prolonged
hand-to-hand fight on the ramparts. _Five times_ was a bill to repeal
the spring-shooting law introduced and defeated!

Even after the bill had passed both houses by good majorities, the
Governor declared that he could not sign it. And then there poured into
the Executive offices such a flood of callers, letters, telegrams and
telephone calls that he became convinced that the People desired the
law; so he signed the bill in deference to the wishes of the majority.

The principle that the sale of game is wrong, and fatal to the existence
of a supply of game, is as fixed and unassailable as the Rocky
Mountains. Its universal acceptance is only a question of intelligence
and common honesty. The open states owe it to themselves and each other
to enact both the spirit and the letter of the Bayne law, _and do it
quickly_, before it is too late to profit by it! Let them remember the
heath hen,--amply protected when entirely too late to save it from
extinction!

It is fairly beyond question that the killing of wild game for the
market, and its sale in the "open season" _and out of it_, is
responsible for the disappearance of at least fifty per cent of