Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 106, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1899 — Wise Editors and Civilized Wolves. [ARTICLE]

Wise Editors and Civilized Wolves.

Our much esteemed neighboring editorial brethren of the Remington Press and the Monticello Herald, join in a mutual pean of rejoicing over the fact that in both Jasper and White counties there will be no bounties on wolves after next January. They agree that men (we think they mean some men) will pursue wolves just as fiercely and slay them just as remorselessly without a bounty as with it. Now we think this is only true' in part. In the cases of these two valiant editors for instanoeit would make no difference to them in their pursuit of wolves whether there was a bounty on them or not; and it would make no difference to the wolves either, for their scalps would be safe, bounty or no bounty. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but when it comes to killing wolves a pen is not in it with >ia < long distance shot gun loaded with Buck shot. Our editors hold further that a region so far advanced in civilization as ours, does not need to pay bounties on its ferocious and destructive f®r® naturae. But that is a novel plea surely, and it is first time we ever heard the idea advanced that even the wolves and foxes of the country were yielding to the civilizing and humanizing influences of our modern reading circles and traveling libraries, womens club, Epworth Leagues, free reading rooms ect. We had thought that the only effect of civilization on wolves was to educate them out of their liking for the wild and woolly cotton tails and to develope in them a highly discriminating and epicurean taste for such civilized proucts as highly bred young pigs, lambs, calves and the like, with an occasional variation in diet of chickens, turkeys and other farm poultry. Yea, verily, had not these sapient editors given us the benefit of their wolf wisdom we should have continued to believe that the more “civilized” a community is, the more harm the wolves do, from the very fact of their appetites being educated up to a civilized diet of pigs, poultry, calves and sheep.