4 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



conveyed by seeing and trying out. When the War demoralized 

 the European dye centres — London, Paris, Leipzic — American 

 firms hurried to Europe and hired the expert dyers and dressers, 

 paying them literally higher remuneration than crown princes and 

 crown princesses of Europe draw. Sorters of furs get #6500 for 

 three months' work, twice as much as a professor gets for a year. 

 Good fur dressers, mere boys many of them, draw from #100 to #105 

 a week. By the time the War was over, America was doing the 

 huge dye business which Europe had done, though Europe was 

 slashing prices 50% to try to woo back the lost trade. The best 

 fur dyers of Europe represent sixty years of effort and trial. I 

 know one American firm that brought over its dyers from Leipzic 

 when the War broke out. It sacrificed 20,000 muskrat pelts in 

 one experiment to get tints just right and 100,000 rabbit skins in 

 another experiment. It is now dyeing muskrat by the half million 

 a season, and rabbits yearly in quantities running from seven to 

 eighteen millions. I know another firm that twenty years ago 

 was treating 100,000 muskrats a year. It is now treating four 

 million a year; and it declares the trade demand is stronger and 

 stronger than it can ever fill. Mystery, romance, adventure, 

 secrecy, chances to satiate the soul of a gambler — all have marked 

 the fur trade from the time the little beaver on the East and the little 

 sable to the West lured the discovery and exploration of a continent, 

 down to our own days, when America captured the great fur sales 

 of Europe and followed up this capture by getting the European 

 dye processes and improving on them. 



Has the last chapter of the great fur romance been written ? 



Have we reached, or are we reaching, the extinction of all furs ? 



It is a pretty big question ; and it is a very serious one ; for there 

 is no material will take the place of fur as protection against cold. 



The increase in the value of individual furs is something stagger- 

 ing and almost incredible. 



The trapper to-day sells some small furs for more than he could 

 realize on an ordinary gold nugget. He comes out of the wilds 



