Grey, Zane

Autograph manuscript, 8 1/2 pages (12  1/2  x 8 in.; 318 x 203 mm) in pencil with emendations in ink and pencil, n.p., ca. 1920s, being an article on game fish conservation; paper clip stains in top margin of first leaf, lower right corner of first two leaves chipped.  Half blue morocco gilt clamshell case.

Zane Grey's plea for conservation in California.  According to a bookseller's description which accompanies this lot, the manuscript was to have been titled "California Game Fish: How Long Will They Last?" and publication rights had been sold to Field & Stream.  The manuscript may also be the basis for Grey's "A Warning to California," published in Outdoor America, November 1924.

Grey explains in this article that it is not "a few millionaire angles" who are trying to oppose the commercial fish interests, but 150,000 California conserevationists who "... have arrived late, maybe too late to save the game and fish, but they have arrived.  and we want it distinctly understood that we are fighting for California, and for our children, and grandchildren, to the end of saving something of California's wild life for them to enjoy and to live on ..."  He rails against the packers who destroy white sea bass, yellowtail, albacore, tuna, sardines. and "the king of all," the swordfish.  "[G]lorious California should not be commercialized in petty little ways like that ...."