Anti-Steel-Trap Champion Styles Self No Sob-Sister but Sportsman--Commander Breck Shows Cruelty of Device

"My desire is not to oppose trapping or killing of animals, but I endeavor to prevent throughout the country the torturing of animals in steel traps."

Commander Edward Breck, Former American Vice-Consul to Germany, and now President of the Anti-Steel-Trap League, made this statement, emphasizing that he was "not a sob-sister but a regular sportsman. Being a gentleman and a huntsman, to say nothing of being an officer, I feel that using a steel trap is atrocious."

The bill to penalize the use of certain traps and other devices for the capture of fur-bearing animals, camp up for a hearing at the State House yesterday, and Commander Breck was the chief speaker in a heated argument. Backing up his statement more definitely, he told the CRIMSON reporter that after studying the subject carefully for three years, and collecting data from every source, he could now announce that approximately 100,000,000 dumb animals were being slaughtered in agony every year.

Commander Breck again emphasized that he was not a sentimentalist, and that he had shot more moose than any other man. "When I was not at sea, I lived in the woods. I used to use traps myself, and only slowly did I realize what a cruel thing I was doing. I made a discovery. It is was not that a device which catches a beast by the leg and holds it for hours and often days was cruel and wrong; that has been known for centuries. My discovery was that the bulk of this atrocity was so enormous, so much worst in character than was thought, that it was quite unnecessary, thus robbing the fur industry, as now carried on, of every scintilla of ethical justification."