Ray P. Holland papers

Born in Atchison, Kansas, Ray P. Holland was interested in the outdoors from an early age. He became a noted sportsman and writer, was dedicated to the management of wildlife and, as a United States Game Warden during World War I, became a key figure in the Supreme Court case of Missouri v. Holland, decided in 1920, a landmark case in constitutional and conservation law. Active in conservation groups such as the American Game Protective Association and the International Association of Game, Fish, and Conservation Commissioners, Holland was editor of the magazine Field & Stream during its heyday in the 1920s and 1930s. Chronology List

• 1884 Born, August 20, Atchison, Kansas, Raymond Prunty Holland, known throughout life as Ray P. Holland. Father, Dr. Daniel J. Holland, a physician, died in 1890. Mother, Mary E. Prunty Holland later remarried, to A. J. Hawri. Uncle, Dr. William J. Holland, a prominent entomologist, was director of the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh for many years.
• 1893-1919 HUNTING AND FISHING ON THE MISSOURI RIVER. Settled in 1854, Atchison was an important stop for wagon trains, a railroad terminal, and a booming river city when Holland was a child. Holland was entranced with the Missouri River which was navigable far north from Atchison along the Nebraska border, across South Dakota and North Dakota to Montana and south from Atchison across Missouri to join the Mississippi River above St. Louis. He knew the river boats, the pleasures of fishing and lived in a boyhood style reminiscent of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which Mark Twain published in 1883. Holland was also a hunter who "shot his first duck, a greenwing teal, with a muzzle-loading shotgun in October of 1893. He was 9 years old." [Ted Trueblood, "Ray P. Holland," Field & Stream, June 1970, pp. 195-l96.] There are four great, distinguishable flyways taken by migratory birds in their spring flights to breeding grounds in Canada and their fall return south: the Atlantic, Mississippi, Central and Pacific flyways. Holland was an avid duck hunter and came easily to identify all of the birds on the great Mississippi flyway. He has written that he owned one of the first motorboats on the river at Atchison and traveled widely with it, probably before 1910. [Holland, "It Was Mostly Luck," unpub. MSS., Holland Papers, container 10, p. xi-7.] With friends, Holland was out hunting or fishing in season through all the years he resided in Atchison until he moved East to New York in 1919.
• 1893-1903 EDUCATION. After passing through grammar school, Holland attended Atchison High School, the College Preparatory School at Atchison, from 1899 to 1902 and then, for one year, was a student at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. He abandoned an intention to enter Princeton University in 1903.
• 1903-1912 EARLY OCCUPATIONS. A paper carrier for the Atchison Globe when quite young, Holland listed himself later as an accountant and held a series of jobs in Atchison during the decade after finishing his formal education. He worked in a lumber yard, was cashier of the Atchison Railway, Light and Power Company, ran the office of a small foundry and, finally, as order and price clerk was in charge of the Atchison Saddlery. MARRIAGE AND FAMILY. Holland married Ruth Marie Perkins, October 16, 1907. They took a river steamboat from Atchison to New Orleans for a wedding trip during which they made visits of several days each in St. Louis, Cape Giradeau, Memphis, Vicksburg and, of course, New Orleans, returning by train. Their children were three: Robert Perkins, Raymond Prunty, Jr., and Daniel John.
• 1903-1919 FREE-LANCE WRITER OF THE OUTDOORS. Engrossment with the pleasures of camping, hunting and fishing began to payoff in dollars as Holland's stories and articles poured forth. He sent a story done for a class at Lawrenceville School to the magazine Sports Afield and got back a check. By 1912 he was a serious writer, committed enough and successful enough to give up other work and become a full-time free lance. This permitted him even more time in the field, more time to observe and indulge in hunting and fishing and, thereby, become a more authoritative writer. In the winter of 1913, and at other times later, he and his family spent the winter at Balboa Beach, near Newport Bay, south of Los Angeles where, as he later wrote, "I could beat a typewriter one day and hunt and fish the next." [Holland, "It Was Mostly Luck," container 10, p. xiii-1. ] Among his early writings were "A Goose That Was a Goose," Recreation, March 1912, pp. 132-133; "How Fast Can a Duck Fly?," Outing, September 1913, pp. 748-753; "Calling California Ducks," Outing, November 1913, pp. 139-145; "Geese and More Geese," Field and Stream, December 1913, pp. 814-820; and "Do Birds Return to Their Own Nests?," Outdoor World & Recreation, July 1914, pp. 19-20. WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY. Holland's publications were commonly run with photographs he snapped and developed. Perhaps his first published photograph was of a beehive in Atchison which appeared over the caption, "A Boy Whom Bees Do Not Sting," in Leslie's Weekly, September 24, 1913. As Holland's views about the place of hunting matured and his belief in conservation ripened he spoke out in favor of the camera instead of the gun for out-of-season pleasure, urging "all you old duck-hunters try my way of spring shooting." He went on: "And when you get the same old restlessness in the spring, when the ducks and geese start north, you can go and hunt as long as you please. There is no limit. I have shot thousands and thousands and thousands in a day, and my conscience never hurt me one whit. Then, again, you can always take these pictures out and hunt these same hunts over and over again. If you are the least bit inclined to play with a kodak try this duck game some day and you will undoubtedly get the fever." [Holland, "The Gun for Spring Shooting," Outdoor World & Recreation, July 1913, p. 33. For a remarkable photograph of a duck blind, the original of which is in container 13, see Holland, "The Top Notch of Outdoor Photography," Outing, May 1914, pp. 192-201.]
• 1914 LOBBYIST FOR NATIONAL LIMIT ON SPRING SHOOTING. Through wide reading and observation, Holland became an advocate of the Weeks-McLean bill which passed Congress as the Migratory Bird Protection Act of March 3, 1913 [37 Stat. 847]. He and Gene Howe, son of Ed Howe who was editor of the Atchison Globe, "decided to join the anti-spring shooting crowd" in seeking appropriations to enforce the new law. They sent numerous telegrams to Congressmen in Washington to this end. [Holland, "It Was Mostly Luck," container 10, p. xiii-3.]
• 1914-1919 UNITED STATES GAME WARDEN. Having taken a civil service examination at Leavenworth, in August 1914, Holland was appointed District Inspector and United States Game Warden in the Biological Survey of the U.S. Department of Agriculture with the specific duty of enforcing the new Migratory Bird Protection Act in seven midwestern states. He continued to live in Atchison, Kansas and was regarded by some hunters in other states not to have jurisdiction over them. He took both an educational approach and an enforcement approach to the law. Thus he arranged to speak to groups of hunters in duck clubs throughout the region to persuade them that limits were needed on shooting to preserve waterfowl and that bag limits and seasonal limits would be effective to protect their interests as sportsmen. Holland's interest was to stop the "game hogs" and the market hunters who were depleting the supply of game by wholesale slaughter.
  
  UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE MIGRATORY BIRD PROTECTION ACT OF 1913. Opponents of the new act stood on the ground of state's rights, arguing that the commerce clause of the United States Constitution was not a valid basis for national regulation of waterfowl shooting. The opposition tested the act successfully by finding a judge in Jonesboro, Arkansas who held the Federal law unconstitutional. [United States v. Shauver, 214 Fed. 154 (1914).] Warden Holland hoped to counter this by bringing a test case of his own in that he hoped would be the more hospitable United States Court in Kansas City, Kansas but this, too, failed. [United States v. McCullagh, 221 Fed. 288 (1915).] Holland continued in his position while sportsmen, conservationists and the lawyers considered in Washington what course to take.
  
  CANADA-UNITED STATES MIGRATORY BIRD TREATY. Many favorable to the 1913 act feared that it had an insufficient constitutional basis at the time and urged that authority for national regulation be based on the treaty power. One of these was Elihu Root who made the argument as early as 1913. The idea was in the air from then on and was fed by the judicial set backs in the Midwest. It was decided to negotiate a treaty with Great Britain to protect migratory birds in both Canada and the United States. At the same time the appeal of the Shauver and McCullagh cases was delayed and then abandoned by the Department of Justice; the Supreme Court never revisited those rulings. A treaty was signed and promulgated in 1916.
  
  MIGRATORY BIRD TREATY ACT. The bilateral treaty between Canada and the United States was implemented to provide penalties for violations and appropriations for enforcement by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of July 3, 1918 [40 Stat. 755].
• 1919-1920 MISSOURI V. HOLLAND. In the spring of 1919. United States Game Warden Ray P. Holland made arrests for shooting ducks out of season, arrests that led directly to testing the constitutional reach of the treaty power as a basis for protecting migratory birds. Those arrested at a club near Neosho, Missouri were two bankers and an insurance executive from Kansas City, the Democratic committeeman from Missouri and the attorney general of the State of Missouri. Frank W. McAllister. Immediately upon arraignment before the U.S. Commissioner in Clinton, Missouri, the local sheriff, under the direction of McAllister, turned the tables and had Holland arrested for having wild ducks in his possession without a Missouri hunting license. This charge was dropped but soon the State of Missouri brought suit in the Federal district court at Kansas City, claiming that Holland had acted unconstitutionally in enforcing the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The Act was upheld in this case in June, 1919 and Missouri appealed to the United States Supreme Court. On April 19, 1920 the Court ruled, in an opinion by Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., that the Migratory Bird Treaty of 1916 and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 were constitutional. As constitutional doctrine, the importance of this case has rested on its broad reading of the treaty power as against the claim of a state. But this case of Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416 (1920), is also significant in conservation law, as can be seen in the following passage from the opinion by Holmes: "To put the claim of the State upon title is to lean against a slender reed. Wild birds are not in the possession of anyone; and possession is the beginning of ownership. The whole foundation of the states' rights is the presence within their jurisdiction of birds that yesterday had not arrived, tomorrow may be in another state and in a week a thousand miles away."
• 1919-1924 AMERICAN GAME PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION. Holland's writing, which he had continued while a U.S. Game Warden in the Midwest --chiefly under the nom de plume of "Bob White" --and now his prominence in the test case of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, led one of the leading sportsmen's advocates of the day, John E. Burnham, to invite him to New York City to edit the Bulletin of the American Game Protective Association. Holland moved his family East, briefly to White Plains and then to Scarsdale, to accept this position. His office was on the 22nd floor of the Woolworth Building and his duties were to edit the monthly Bulletin as well as to prepare a special newsletter of the Association that several prominently known outdoor magazines published in their columns. Founded in 1911, the full name of the organization was the American Game Protective and Propagation Association. Support was plentiful, coming on the one hand from arms and ammunition makers who were "farsighted" and, on the other, from men of means interested in game refuges and in sport. Holland's views and those of others in the American Game Protective Association were in harmony. "The basic idea of this organization is 'Sport for Sport's Sake.' We want to increase game by setting aside sanctuaries where game birds may breed undisturbed at all times, through the establishment of state game farms by means of which public covers may be stocked." [Bulletin of the American Game Protective Association, January 1919, p. 12.] Every new member was sent a copy of "The American Sportsman's Creed" composed by Zane Grey (1875-1939) and first published in 1918, a statement that pledged prudence and fair play in hunting, scientific study, and game preservation. [Bulletin, July 1918, p. 3.]
• 1919-1934 GAME REFUGES, PUBLIC SHOOTING GROUNDS, AND A FEDERAL DUCK STAMP. The gnarled story of the origins of the Federal Duck Stamp to support game refuges is difficult to spell out, but, while Holland's importance is often not credited in published accounts, it is clear that his role was significant. Holland published the first known statement of the idea of a duck stamp in the Bulletin he edited, thus spreading the notion that a migratory bird protective fund be created by imposing a Federal hunting license upon those wishing to hunt migratory fowl. This is a part of the idea, as originally set forth: "During the war the government established a method of issuing war savings stamps through the post offices of the country, and this agency for distribution was very successful in reaching those who were desirous of buying the stamps. The same machinery can be used for selling hunting licenses, the licenses being evidenced by a stamp to be affixed to the applicant's state hunting license and cancelled." [A. S. Houghton, "A Federal Hunting License," Bulletin, April 1920, p. 15.] This was advanced in detail by Holland in the July 1920 issue of Field and Stream. There would be a 50 cent duck stamp issued annually by the Department of Agriculture, the revenue from which would be for the special purpose of acquiring, developing and maintaining Federal waterfowl refuges. This idea originated with three people: George Lawyer, Chief Harden under the Biological Survey, John Burnham and Holland. For several years beginning around 1922, Holland was joined by Dr. Edward H. Nelson of the Biological Survey as the chief advocates of a program that combined refuge maintenance with hunting, all financed by a Federal licensing stamp. Opposition emerged among sportsmen and conservationists, in part perhaps because of the plain-spoken name given to the bill in Congress where the Nelson-Holland proposal was officially styled as "The Public Shooting Grounds Bill." A friend of the measure has described the controversy in the 1920s as follows: "Strong opposition was led by Dr. [William T.] Hornaday and was initially supported by Outdoor Life, the infant Izaac Walton League, the Camp-Fire Club, Aldo Leopold, Fiorello La Guardia, and others who feared the refuges would turn into federally maintained shooting preserves which would produce no surplus of birds. Advocates of the Nelson-Holland proposal included the Boone and Crockett Club and the National Association of Audubon Societies. Dr. Nelson maintained that because of food scarcity on the wintering grounds, a great increase in the waterfowl population was not then desirable, and that the birds would benefit most from state-regulated shooting combined with federally regulated game management on refuges. He was seconded in an Audubon bulletin by Charles Sheldon, who was also an influential member of the Boone and Crockett Club. Though the bill was defeated, the Camp-Fire Club, the Izaac Walton League, and Outdoor Life eventually saw the light of reason--in the form of sport-supported refuges which eventually materialized in the acquisition program authorized by the 1929 Migratory Bird Conservation Act." [Robert Elman, The Atlantic Flyway (New York: Winchester' Press, 1972), pp. 170-171. Also, see Migratory Bird Conservation Act, Feb. 18, 1929, 45 Stat. 1222, 16 U.S.C. sec. 715.] While the 1929 Act authorized land purchases and the Bureau of Biological Survey surveyed for places suitable for waterfowl and for purchase, appropriations were insufficient to go far. The drought of the early 1930s reduced breeding grounds for ducks while the kill by man rose sharply. This disastrous trend was reversed with enactment of the Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp Act of 1934. Popularly known as the Duck Stamp Act, this led Henry Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture, to name Jay N. "Ding" Darling to be Chief of a reorganized Bureau of Biological Survey which included a new Refuge Division. Labor from the WPA and CCC, along with "creation and sale of duck stamps-which by 1970 had realized over 175 million dollars for migratory waterfowl refuges--was an important part of their plan." [Jene C. Gilmore, Art for conservation: The Federal Duck Stamps (Barre, Mass.: Barre Publishers, 1971), p. 15. Also, see the Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp Act, March 16, 1934, 48 Stat. 451, 16 U. S. C. sec. 718.] The first stamp, for 1934-1935, was designed by Darling, and sold for $1.00 beginning August 14, 1934. Ray Holland and the other originators of the duck stamp idea are not mentioned in the book on the subject, cited above.
• 1919-1970 INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF GAME, FISH AND CONSERVATION COMMISSIONERS. Holland became active in the International Association of Game, Fish and Conservation Commissioners (founded in 1902) while serving as U.S. Game Warden. He was elected its secretary at the meeting in Ottawa, Canada in 1920. He served in this position, and as treasurer as well, for 22 years, later being elected to be an honorary life member. Work on legislation and the cooperative efforts of the several states and provinces here and in Canada was greatly aided by this organization.
• 1924-1941 FIELD & STREAM. Holland served as editor of Field & Stream from 1924 to 1941. Founded in 1895, its circulation grew rapidly during the 1920s and 1930s. A member of the staff today has recalled that, during Holland's editorship, "Field & Stream published the works of some of the best writers and artists of the era--John Taintor Foote, Irvin S. Cobb, Havilah Babcock, David M. Hewell, Clarke Venable, Harold Titus, Archibald Rutledge, Ray Mullholland, Gordon MacQuarrie, Corey Ford, Edison Marshall, Albert Bigelow Paine, Bob Davis, Erle Stanley Gardner, Frank Dufresne, C. E. Gillham--plus everyone who amounted to anything in the outdoor writing field during this period. " [Trueblood, "Ray P. Holland," Field & Stream, June 1970, p. 198.] As an editorial advocate, Holland used his position to work for waterfowl and other national legislation described above. But Holland and his audience of sportsmen also opposed gun control of every sort, perhaps most notably in the form of criticism in the late 1930s of the Sullivan Law in New York State that required registration of handguns.
• 1935 Served G. & C. Merriam Co. as special editor on the subjects of hunting and field sports for Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition, Unabridged.
• 1941 Resigned editorship of Field & Stream.
• 1941-1973 ACTIVITIES IN LATER YEARS. Holland continued to combine much outdoor life with further free-lance writing. He had hunted for 14 consecutive years in Saskatchewan. Now he began spending winters in Naples, Florida and, after the war, for ten years spent up to three months each winter in Cuba. In the late 1940s he moved to Quechee, Vermont for the summer months. When Castro came to power in Cuba, Holland spent the winter months in Roswell, New Mexico. In addition to the many books listed in the bibliography at page 10 of this register, he wrote articles and stories for many magazines in the postwar period, The Saturday Evening Post, Liberty, Collier's, Nation's Business, True, and American Legion among them. His last published story was "Desert Tragedy," Field & Stream, September 1966. Not politically active apart from conservation issues, Holland did question the growth of national power during his later years. He approved of the effort, manifested by the so-called "Bricker Amendment," aimed at reducing the President's authority to make Executive Agreements and at limiting the treaty power's effect on domestic matters. The rule of Missouri v. Holland was a target and he joined in aiming at it. Holland's sentiments were conveyed to a national columnist who described them well. [See Raymond Moley, "Perspective: Behind Holland v. Missouri [sic]," Newsweek, October 19, 1953. p. 124. Clipping in container 4, folder 11, Holland Papers.] The American Game Protection Association had been in virtual hibernation after 1924, and Holland and a group of others revived the organization in 1958. He became President, and the Association endowed and established many game refuges in midwestern states during the next decade. Finally a merger was decided upon and Holland retired from this activity upon the formation of the consolidated organization known as the "New York Conservation Council and the American Game Association Foundation, Inc." in 1969.
• 1973 Died February 20, 1973 at age 88 in Roswell, New Mexico. Survived by his widow and three sons. He was buried in the family plot in Atchison, Kansas. [Ted Trueblood, "Ray P. Hol1and, 1884-1973," Field & Stream, May 1973, p. 96.]