A REALLY LOUD ISSUE

The United States Senate fights over the naval bill and the peace treaty; Boston fights over Sunday baseball; everybody fights over prohibition; but Michigan is confronted by a problem vastly more penetrating, and even more odorous than these. Michigan fights over skunks. Recently biologists and furriers convinced the state legislature that skunks are valuable integral parts of a community, and as such should expect the protection due to any and all of the state citizens. As a result, it is now against the law in Michigan to molest skunks, even in the way of self protection, during the months from February to November.

Unfortunately, various people of unwelcome experience with the Skunk family--those gauche Skunks, you know, my dear--have wailed long and loudly about the rights of other citizens to remain sweet-smelling. Farmers complain that skunks dig up bumble bees and not only make them so ill-tempered that they attack without warning, but destroy them as well, preventing the pollenization of the clover. Against such charges, even the skunks retire in confusion.

The matter will form an issue in the 1929 legislature of Michigan; perhaps a Senatorial Investigation Committee will hold hearings concerning it. Such a hearing should be entertaining, with the enemies of skunks exhibiting disinterred clothes and sometimes embarrassingly placed bee stings against the evidence of the friends of skunks who will show the little allies of man eating obnoxious insects and in the form of furs. The hearing would be decidedly unfair were not a skunk invited to show what he could do in an exhibition of natural talent. Laws are too much based on nebulous theory; here is a chance for the legislature of Michigan to make a name for itself as viewing concrete facts and basic causes before the passing of their statutes.