Animals: Misbehaving Motorman

Misbehaving Motorman (Concl.)

When 33 U. S. sportsmen banded last year to help Government and private conservation agencies protect and restore the nation’s wild life, they chose Walter P. Chrysler as first chairman of their American Wild Life Institute. Motorman Chrysler, whose favorite fun is shooting wildfowl on his Great Choptank River estate in eastern Maryland, showed himself a good friend of conservation by serving as an Institute director until last spring, contributing substantial sums to its treasury.

Meantime, Orin D. Steele, able and vigilant Federal game agent at Cambridge, Md., was receiving anonymous letters asserting that Mr. Chrysler was violating the very conservation laws his Institute aimed to bolster. Because of the motorman’s standing as a conservationist, and because he knew how natives envied the rich outlanders who have fenced off their best shooting grounds as private preserves, Agent Steele ignored the letters as long as he could. Then one warm morning last December he set out on a “routine patrol” along the Great Choptank, came to a blind which contained Walter P. Chrysler, his estate superintendent, William Pritchett, and ten dead ducks. “I’m sorry, Mr. Chrysler,” said Agent Steele when he had finished his examination, “but this is against the law.”

Last fortnight Motorman Chrysler & superintendent were summoned to appear in Baltimore’s Federal District Court to answer three charges: 1) failure to plug their repeating shotguns to three-shell capacity; 2) failure to have Federal duck stamps on their hunting licenses; 3) shooting over a baited area (TIME, Oct. 26). Each offense was punishable by $500 fine, six months’ imprisonment.

Last week the day came for Mr. Chrysler’s hearing and Mr. Chrysler was in Detroit. Anxiously his attorney informed the court that Mr. Chrysler had wired his willingness to appear in person next day if necessary. Angrily Judge W. Calvin Chesnut snapped that Mr. Chrysler had best consider that it was necessary. Chief Gabrielson: “All citizens are equal under the Law.” Next day a nervous Mr. Chrysler faced a scowling judge and in barely audible tones confessed to the unplugged gun charge. “Of course I should have known,” said he, “but Pritchett is supposed to look out for these things for me.”

Superintendent Pritchett gladly shouldered the blame, said that he had ordered plugs but they had not arrived. As for the stamps, it was conceded that both men possessed them, had simply failed to paste them on their licenses. Of the most serious charge, baiting, the prosecuting attorney proclaimed “a shocking disregard for the law,” demanded a conviction. Mr. Chrysler explained that he regularly scattered grain over his marshes except during hunting season, said 500 canvasbacks had boarded there last winter.

Sharply warning Mr. Chrysler to make his employes “keep within the law,” Judge Chesnut dismissed the baiting charge, fined motorman & employe $10 each for not plugging their guns, $1 each for not pasting on their stamps.

Motorman Chrysler was not the only distinguished defendant arraigned before Judge Chesnut last week. Among others, Director Joseph B. Weaver of the U. S. Bureau of Navigation and Steamboat Inspection, was fined $5 for unplugged gun, $1 for unpasted stamp. Enroute from Texas, Albanus Phillips, big, bluff Cambridge Md. soupmaker whose 6,700-acre estate adjoins his good friend Mr. Chrysler’s, was expected in court this week to answer a charge of baited shooting.

In Washington last week, rotund Ira N. Gabrielson, who was appointed chief of the Bureau of Biological Survey last year by Mr. Chrysler’s good friend Franklin Roosevelt, commented: “All citizens are equal under the Law and our men are instructed to arrest all law violators regardless of their identity.”