22 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



seals fine as any ever turned out in Europe. That being the case 

 — the trade asked — why ship millions of American muskrats 

 undressed to Austria and Germany to be shipped back dressed and 

 manufactured for the American to buy ? 



Why not dress and manufacture here, and so increase profits 

 all round here from the trapper to the most exclusive retail 

 shop ? 



But Kamchatka and Siberia have the rarest furs in the world ; 

 and they desperately needed American gold during the War years ; 

 so their furs also came pouring into American markets via the Pacific. 

 So did Japanese furs, and during the War, there was such^a slump in 

 the prices of Canadian furs in London and Paris that they, too, 

 began pouring into the American market. 



American fur auctions were not devised by any genius. They 

 were forced by fate. 



So great were the profits from direct sales here, there was one de- 

 leterious reaction. This country was oozing with newly rich 

 money. Prices jumped 75% ; then 100% ; just about the time the 

 Texas oil boom began to subside. The gentry, who feed like car- 

 rion birds on the corpses of all bones, rushed into the fur game. 

 Many of them had more experience in playing the ponies, or in 

 Seventh Avenue bar rooms, than with furs. Certain that fur prices 

 were going to jump another 100%, they dashed off to the Canadian 

 North-west, to Siberia, to Japan, to Kamchatka, to South America ; 

 and they began paying ready money for raw furs out like water. 

 The trapper looked at this new specimen in the fur trade ; and he 

 raised the price of muskrat from 50^ to #5. Where the pelt was a 

 good one, the buyer got his money back at the fur auction, with 

 perhaps $1.50 to the good, which is a handsome profit if you have 

 20,000 good skins. Where the skins were no good, the buyer got 

 about $4.50 of experience for each pelt; and so did the bank that 

 backed him. 



There is not the slightest doubt that the fur auctions of 1920 have 

 driven this class of shoestring operators out of the fur trade for 



