TRANSFER FROM EUROPE TO AMERICA 3 



pessimists shrieked with glee. "Didn't we tell you it was a soap 

 bubble due to burst ?" "You can never raise wild animals in captiv- 

 ity" and so on and on and on; the usual chorus of a gloria when 

 an untried venture goes to smash. 



But, presto, barely was the War over, when fashion went fox 

 skin mad ; and silver fox skins sold at the fur auctions of Montreal 

 and St. Louis and New York in the spring of 1920 at #1200 a skin 

 for a single neck piece ; and one fox farm of Prince Edward Island, 

 consisting of 220 acres and 66 foxes, sold for $100,000. 



Doesn't look as if fox farming had come to such a bad smash 

 after all, does it ? 



But if the fur traders and the fur trappers and the fur farmers 

 are secretive and elusive, their secrecy is as an open book compared 

 to the secrecy of the trade — of the dressers and dyers and manu- 

 facturers. 



The general public may not know it; but the fur trade does. 

 The excellence of fur depends far more on the dresser and dyer and 

 manufacturer than on the trapper. The law protects and fore- 

 fends the trapper from mistakes. He may not use poison ; for that 

 fevers the animal and spoils the pelt and reduces his price. He may 

 not trap out of season ; for the fur will be unprime ; and the game 

 warden will confiscate it. Furs to the value of $25,000 have been 

 confiscated from one trapper in Alaska this year. And even if he 

 got the unprime fur past the game warden out to market, unprime 

 fur sheds hairs. It would bring a poor price, a price for only 

 felting and hatting; and the buyers would "spot" him and shun 

 his goods. 



So the fur usually comes in good or fair condition from the 

 hunting field. It is in the dressing and dyeing that it will be made 

 or marred ; and dressers and dyers are not going to tell one another 

 their secrets and inventions and mysteries. No dime novel could 

 exaggerate the mystery of these dyes and processes. To the secret 

 rooms, no outsider is ever admitted. Formulas are written in code, 

 and much of the process can only be learned man from man 3 and 



