“Why not a Congress sometime which would subtract 500 useless or foolish or annoying laws from the statute-books, instead of adding 500 laws to those same bulky volumes? Such a Congress might earn recognition as the greatest the world had yet seen. “In one of our State legislators a few years ago an extreme illustration occurred of the desire of a member to have his name attached to some piece of legislation. This particular member was sent to the Legislature from a more or less rural district. He introduced a bill providing that a bounty of five dollars be paid by the State for the hide of every loup-cervier (the Canada lynx or wild cat) killed in the Commonwealth. Most of the members did not know what a loup-cervier was and had to consult the dictionary, or some other member who had beaten them to the dictionary, to find out what this particular animal (popularly known in some places as Lucy Vee) was. The legislator who desired to have his name go down in history as the author of an addition to the laws of the State is said to have traded his vote on practically every other piece of legislation which came up at that session for votes on his pet measure, which was passed. The State pays as much as twenty or thirty dollars some years for the animals killed on which this bill offered a bounty! “If there is one place above all others where there is pride of authorship, it is in the halls of America’s State and National capitols; and, as in the field of belles-lettres, there is plenty of plagiarism. Similar bills also are frequently introduced by a half dozen or more members, each hoping his may be the one which will stick and bear the mark of fame. “The United States ‘easily holds first place in the manufacture of statutory law,’ declared Mr. Emery in his speech. ‘A single Congress,’ he added, ‘usually receives some 20,000 bills. Many of the States consider not less than 1000. During the year 1921, 42 legislatures were in session. Judging from past years, Congress and the States annually enact an average of 14,000 statutes. The State and National legislation of a single year recently required more than 40,000 pages of official print.’ “Certainly, it is time for a Congress on limitation of legislation.” The same paper has this to say, editorially, on “The Achilles Heel of Prohibition”: