50 Department of Conservation of Louisiana 



of Louisiana must be made to realize that there is within 

 the State's borders a great and valuable industry conducted 

 on what is now believed to be waste lands. 



The fact that Louisiana possesses a six to seven million 

 dollar raw fur pelt industry is not known to all and un- 

 suspected by many otherwise well informed. The editor of 

 a prominent New Orleans daily when told at a luncheon 

 club gathering that Louisiana produced more pelts of fur 

 animals than all Canada, wrote an editorial on the subject 

 which he headed "Rats !" 



The editor said that he "was pleasantly shocked" at the 

 news. "If true, it shatters a legend inherited from child- 

 hood and sweeps away the fragments. Nearly every read- 

 ing man of 40 years was steeped in his youth, one time or 

 another, in the history and romance of; the Hudson's Bay 

 Company and the rest of the Canadian fur epic, and the 

 facts and fictions about the fur trappers in the frozen 

 North. 



"St. Louis, by force of the circumstances that it was the 

 meeting-place and trading-post for north and west and 

 east, became early the center of our own fur trade. And 

 by force of commercial habit it has held the place. If the 

 supply is at our doors, New Orleans ought to be a great 

 fur market, even if it cannot be The Market. 



"Perhaps it is a mistake to agitate for the reclamation 

 of the swampy belt fringing the Gulf, because it now yields 

 great wealth at a minimum of expense, and can be made to 

 produce still more, in skins. These moreover pay the State 

 a severance tax on $6,000,000 of value. 



"Right or wrong, it is worth thinking about. We should 

 be glad to print informed communications on the subject 

 for either point of view." 



No communications were received and the editor hasn't 

 said "Rats!" since. 



The taking of unprime pelts can instantly be stopped if 

 those most concerned will support a real conservation pro- 

 gram for the fur industry of the State. If those most con- 

 cerned, the trappers, the fur buyers and the fur dealers, do 



