THE TRAFFIC L\ FEATHFJRS 



257 



and resourceful, tnilliiierj' dealers searched 

 the ends of the earth to supply the demands 

 of discriminating women. The chief reason 

 why it has been so difficult to induce educated 

 and cultivated women of this age to give up 

 the heartless practice of wearing feathers 

 seems to be the fact that the desire and 

 necessity for adornment, developed through 

 the centuries, has become so strong as to be 

 really an inherent part of their natures. It is 

 doubtful if many people realize how terrifi- 

 cally strong and all-powerful this desire for 

 conforming to fashion in the matter of dress 

 sits enthroned in the hearts of tens of thou- 

 sands of good women. 



There was a time when I thought that any 

 woman with a matured instinct would give up 

 the wearing of feathers at once upon being 

 informed regarding the l)arbaric cruelties 

 necessarily involved in their taking. But I 

 have learned, to my imutterable amazement, 

 that such is not always the case. Only last 

 week I received one of the shocks of my life. 

 Somewhat over two years ago a young woman 

 came to work in my office. I supposed she 

 had never heard, except casually, of the great 

 scourge of the millinery trade in feathers. 

 Since that time however, she has been in daily 

 touch with all the important efforts made in 

 this country and abroad to legislate the 

 traffic out of existence, to guard from the 

 plume hunters the plundered colonies of 

 egrets and other water birds, and to educate 

 public sentiment to a proper appreciation of 

 the importance of bird protection. She has 

 typewritten a three-hundred-page book on 

 l)irds and bird protection, has acknowledged 

 the receipt of letters from the wardens telling 

 of desperate rifle battles that they have had 

 with poachers, and written letters to the widow 

 of one of oiu' agents shot to death while guard- 

 ing a Florida bird rookery. In the heat of 

 campaigns she has worked overtime and on 

 holidays. I have never known a woman who 

 labored more conscientiously or was appar- 

 ently more interested in the work. Fre- 

 quently her eyes would open wide and she 

 w(juld express resentment when reports 

 reached the office of the atrocities perpe- 

 trated on wild birds by the heartless agents 

 of the feather trade. Recently she married 

 and left us. Last week she called at the office, 

 looking very beautiful and radiant. After a 

 few moments conversation she approached 

 the subject which evidently lay close to her 

 heart. Indicating a cluster of paradise 



aigrettes kept in the office for exhibition 

 purposes, she looked me straight in the face 

 and, in the most frank and guileless manner, 

 asked me to sell them to her for her new hat! 

 The rest of the day I was of little service to 

 the world. 



What was the good of all the long years of 

 unceasing effort to induce women to stop 

 wearing bird feathers, if this was a fair ex- 

 ample of results? Of all the women I knew, 

 there was no one who had been in a position 

 to learn more of the facts regarding bird 

 slaughter than this one; yet it seems that it 

 had never entered her mind to make a per- 

 sonal application of the lesson she had learned. 

 The education and restraint of legislative 

 enactments were all meant for other people. 



How is this deep-seated desire and demand 

 for feathers to be met? Domestic fowls will 

 in part supply it; but for the finer ornaments 

 we must turn to the ostrich, the only bird in 

 the world which has been domesticated exclu- 

 sively for its feather product. These birds 

 were formerly found wild in Arabia, south- 

 western Persia, and practically the whole of 

 Africa. In diminishing numbers they are 

 still to be met with in these regions, espe- 

 cially in the unsettled parts of Africa north of 

 the Orange River. From early times the 

 plumes of these avian giants have been in 

 demand for head decorations, and for cen- 

 turies the people of Asia and Africa killed 

 the birds for this purpose. They were cap- 

 tured chiefly by means of pitfalls, for a long- 

 legged bird, which in full flight can cover 

 twenty-five feet at a stride, is not easily over- 

 taken, even with the Arabs' finest steeds. 



So far as there is any record, young os- 

 triches were first captured and enclosed with 

 a view of rearing them for profit in the year 

 1857. This occurred in South Africa. Dur- 

 ing the years which have since elapsed, the 

 raising of ostriches and the exportation of 

 their plumes has become one of the chief 

 business enterprises of South Africa. Very 

 naturally people in other parts of the world 

 wished to engage in a similar enterprise when 

 they saw with what success the undertaking 

 was crowned in the home country of the 

 ostrich. A few hundred fine breeding birds 

 and a considerable number of eggs were pur- 

 chased by adventurous spirits and exported, 

 with the result that ostrich farms soon 

 sprang up in widely separated localities over 

 the earth. The lawmakers of Cape 

 Colony looked askance at these incipient 



