The Traffic in Feathers 



AX ACCOUNT OF THE METHODS OF THE FEATHER TRADE IN MEETING 



THE DEMANDS OF FASHION, AND THEIR EFFECTS ON THE BIRD 



LIFE OF THE COUNTRY 



By T. GILBERT PEARSON 



Secretary, National Association of Audubon Societies 



TRAFFIC in the feathers of Aiueiican 

 liirds for the milUneiy trade began 

 to develop strongly about 1880 and 

 assumed its greatest proportions 

 during the next ten years. The wholesale 

 luilliners, whose business and pleasure it was 

 to supply these ornaments for women's hats, 

 naturally turnetl for their supply first to those 

 species of birds most easily procured. Agents 

 were soon going about the coimtry looking 

 for men to kill birds for their feathers, and 

 circulars and handbills offering attractive 

 prices for feathers of various kinds were 

 mailed broadcast. The first great onslaughts 

 were made on the breeding colonies of sea 

 birds along the Atlantic Coast. On Long 

 Island there were some very large communi- 

 ties of terns and these were quickly raided. 

 The old liirds were shot down and the unat- 

 tended young were necessarily left to starve. 

 .\long the coast of Massachusetts the sea 

 birds suffered a like fate. Maine, with its 

 innumerable outlying rocky islands was, as 

 it is today, the chief nursery of the herring 

 gulls and common terns of the North At- 

 lantic. This fact was soon discovered and 

 thousands were slaughtered every summer, 

 their wings cut off, and their bodies left to rot 

 among the nests on the rookeries. 



During a period of seven years, over five 

 hundred thousand .skins of the tern, or sea 

 swallow, were collected in spring and summer 

 in the sounds of North and South Carolina. 

 These figures I compiled from the records and 

 accounts given me by men who did the killing. 

 Their method was to fit out small sailing 

 vessels on which they could live comfortably, 

 and cruise for several weeks; in fact they were 

 usually out during the entire three months of 

 the nesting period. That was the time of 

 year that offered best rewards for such work, 

 for then the feathers bore their brightest 

 luster, and the birds, being assembled on 



' By the courtesy of Mr. T. Gilbert Peau-son this 

 chapter from his book A Manual of Bird Study, to be 

 published shortly by Doubleday Page and Company, 

 is given advance publication in the Journal. 



their nesting grounds, could easily be shot 

 in great numbers. When dead, the custom 

 was to skin them, wash off the blood stains 

 with benzine, and dry the feathers with 

 plaster of Paris. Arsenic was used for curing 

 and preserving the skins. Men in this busi- 

 ness became very skillful and rapid in their 

 work, some being able to prepare as many as 

 one hundred skins in a day. 



Frecjuently, millinery agents from New 

 York would take skiimers with them, and 

 going to a favorable locality they would 

 employ local gunners to kill the birds, which 

 they in turn would skin. In this way one 

 New York woman, with some assistants, 

 collected and brought back from Cobb 

 Island, Virginia, ten thousand skins of the 

 least tern in a single season. 



Into the swamps of Florida word was 

 carried that the great millinery trade of the 

 North was bidding high for the feathers of 

 those phmied birds which gave life and 

 beauty even to its wildest regions. It was 

 not long before the cypress fastnesses were 

 echoing to the roar of breechloaders, and cries 

 of agony from the birds were heard even in 

 the remotest depths of the Everglades, while 

 piles of torn feathers became common sights 

 everywhere. What mattered it if the tropical 

 birds of exquisite plumage were swept from 

 existence, if only the millinery trade might 

 prosper? 



The milliners were not content to collect 

 their prey only in obscure and little-known 

 regions, for a chance was seen to commercial- 

 ize the small birds of the forests and fields. 

 Warblers, thrushes, wrens, in fact all those 

 small forms of dainty bird life which come 

 about the home to cheer the hearts of men 

 and women and gladden the eyes of little 

 children, commanded a price if done to death 

 and their pitiful remains shipped to New York. 



Taxidermists, who made a business of se- 

 curing birds and preparing their skins, found 

 abundant opportunity to ply their trade. 

 Never had the business of taxidermy been so 

 profitable. For example, in the spring of 



