SUPPRESS THE SALE OF ALL NATIVE WILD GAME.--The deadly effect of the commercial slaughter of game and its sale for food is now becoming well understood by the American people. One by one the various state legislatures have been putting up the bars against the exportation or sale of any "game protected by the state." The U.S. Department of Agriculture says, through Henry Oldys, that "free marketing of wild game leads swiftly to extermination;" and it is literally true. Up to March, 1911, it appears that several states prohibited the sale of game, sixteen states permitted the sale of all unprotected game, and in eight more there was partial prohibition. Unfortunately, however, many of these states permitted the sale of _imported_ game. Now, since it happened to be a fact that the vast majority of the states prohibit the _export_ of their game, as well as the sale of it, a very large quantity of such game as quail, ruffed grouse, snipe, woodcock and shore birds was illegally shot for the market, exported in defiance both of state laws and the federal Lacey Act, and sold to the detriment of the states that produced it. In other words, in the laws of each state that merely sought to protect _their own_ game, regardless of the game of neighboring states, there was not merely a loop-hole, but there was a gap wide enough to drive through with a coach and four. The ruffed grouse of Massachusetts and Connecticut often were butchered to make Gotham holidays in joyous contempt of the laws at both ends of the line. As a natural result the game of the Atlantic coast was disappearing at a frightful rate. [Illustration: EIGHTEEN STATES ENTIRELY PROHIBIT THE SALE OF GAME WHY DO THE OTHERS LAG BEHIND?] In 1911, the no-sale-of-game law of New York was born out of sheer desperation. The Army of Destruction went up to Albany well-organized, well provided with money and attorneys, with three senators in the Senate and two assemblymen in the lower house, to wage merciless warfare on the whole wild-life cause. The market gunners and game dealers not only proposed to repeal the law against spring shooting but also to defeat all legislation that might be attempted to restrict the sale of game, or impose bag limits on wild fowl. The Milliners' Association proposed to wipe off the books the Dutcher law against the use of the plumage of wild birds in millinery, and an assemblyman was committed to that cause as its special champion.