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WIRE MERRITT

[[line]]

Rice Growers Protest Against Coming of Game Warden

Tell Food Administrator More Than $500,000 Worth of Damage Will Be Done

(The Bee's Special Service.)

WILLOWS (Glenn Co.), September 20.—Aroused by the announcement by the State Fish and Game Commission that the Biological Survey of the Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., is sendinga Federal Game Warden to Willows to arrest and prosecute any person who violates the Federal game law by killing ducks before the season opens, rice growers of the Willows section to-day drafted a telegram to be rushed to California Food Administrator Ralph Merritt asking his intercession to save rice from damage by ducks.

C. L. Donohoe, attorney and rice grower, announces the following is the telegram drafted for writing to Merritt:

"The Government is urging farmers to produce foodstuff. The rice growers of Glenn and Colusa Counties have produced about 50,000 acres of rice this season. The crop is about ready to harvest.

"Last season the ducks destroyed, conservatively, $500,000 worth of rice crops. They are just coming to attack the crops now. We expect the same trouble as last year, possibly worse. It is still the closed season for ducks.

"We are informed that the Federal Department of Biology has sent a United States Deputy Game Warden to Willows, authorized to arrest any person shooting ducks in their rice fields.

"Are we to allow these ducks to destroy the crop, or will you take some action in the matter? The situation is very critical."

To Have Twenty-five Signers.

Donohoe announces the following already have signed the telegram and that a total of twenty-five signers will be obtained this afternoon:

C. L. Donohoe, W. D. Egilbert, S. D. Turman, Charles Jurgus, George Ellis, William Durbrow, T. W. Harlan, H. J. Barcelaux, A. H. Quatman, L. H. Tweed and J. W. Pierson.

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