Darling to Washington

Last week at No. 2320 Terrace Rd.; Des Moines, on a hillside overlooking the Raccoon River, closets and drawers were being emptied, suitcases and trunks were being packed. The stir & bustle presaged a local milestone. After 28 years during which he had won nation-wide fame as the Des Moines Register's syndicated cartoonist, Jay Norwood ("Ding") Darling was going to live in Washington. Week before another onetime Des Moines citizen, Secretary Wallace, had called him to head the Agriculture Department's Bureau of Biological Survey. Manhattan publishers who have made him. many a fancy offer to go East raised their eyebrows at "Ding's" new salary-- $8,000 per year, minus a 15% economy cut. They knew that meant a genuine sacrifice for one of the best-paid cartoonists in the land. "Ding" was willing to make it because his new Federal job will give him a prime chance to serve a cause to which he is passionately devoted --wild-life conservation. Hunting & fishing trips throughout the nation long ago convinced him that the U. S. was recklessly wasting its wildlife resources. Barren lands, starving ducks, hoggish gunners began to appear in his cartoons. He joined Iowa's Fish & Game Commission, became president of its Conservation Commission. Three years ago he helped launch a 25-year plan for restoring Iowa's game, gave Iowa State College $9,000 from his own pocket to develop it. At a rough & tumble hearing in Washington last autumn "Ding's" tongue, agile and stinging as his pen, nearly carried the day for duck protectionists against an overwhelming number of non-protectionists led by hard-driving President Thomas Hambly Beck of P. F. Collier & Son Co. Few months later "Ding," no grudge-bearer, joined Publisher Beck and Professor Aldo Leopold of University of Wisconsin on President Roosevelt's Committee on Wild-Life Restoration. The Committee's program, last week awaiting President Roosevelt's approval, has for its major plank the conversion of submarginal farm lands into game reservations and breeding grounds. Created in 1886, the Biological Survey is the Federal Government's chief wildlife conservation agency. In laboratory & field its agents study animal habits and diseases, experiment with the raising of game and furbearers, stamp out predators of game and crops. To it falls the job of formulating and enforcing Federal game laws, operating more than 100 Federal game reservations and refuges. Spending $1,356,000 this year, its estimated budget for next year is $1,054,084. "Ding" is not to be entirely submerged in Conservationist Darling. Along to Washington last week went the famed "Ding" drawing board. Though he would not look too far into the future, "Ding" had made certain that he would be free to supply some no U. S. newspapers with triweekly cartoons at least until his present contracts expire.

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