Forest and Stream, March 21, 1914
SHAME, VIRGINIA!
Natural resources -- Conservation - Game
We regret to record that on Friday, March 13 -- was it coincidence or by design that the deed was committed on such an unholy day? -- the Virginia House of Delegates killed the Hart-White Game Bill by four votes. Mr. W. P. Patterson, president of the Virginia Fish and Game Protection Association, wires Forest and Stream that "this deplorable action plunges Virginia back again fifty years behind most of the civilized world."
The Hart-White game bill was modelled after the Alabama or Wallace game law, and while here and there it may have ran counter to local opinion, or rather local greed, it is on the whole a most desirable measure, and if the intricacies of Virginia politics allow such action, the bill should be called up again and passed. It was only on February 26 that Mr. Patterson wrote us that the bill went through the Virginia Senate by a majority of eleven votes. Why the House of Delegates killed it we have no means of learning, but as a change of only two or three votes is required to make the bill a law, it would seem that the real sportsmen of Virginia, and what is more to the point, the farmers of Virginia whose crops are being destroyed every year through the depletion of game and other insectivorous birds, ought to be able to bring the necessary pressure to bear in the right direction.
Virginia is known as the mother of presidents; she possessed in early Colonial times, Dominion privileges and dignities conferred by the mother country, but in game legislation she has been sadly lacking. The people of Virginia want better game laws and the politicians will grant them if the people will take enough interest in their own affairs to demand their rights. All honor to the Virginia Game and Fish Protective Association and other friends of conservation who have fought a good fight. Even though they are defeated temporarily, they are bound to win in the end, and this paper will, in as far as possible, lend them all the aid within its power.