WHAT WOMEN FUR BUYERS SHOULD KNOW 27 



or muskrat, from the Alaska seal; and muskrat pelts jump in price 

 from 12 and 50 cents to $4 and #5. 



"Then comes a whim of fashion. Mrs. B doesn't want a 



Hudson seal coat because her social rival Mrs. C has one; or 



some of the other reasonless whims. Then a lot of shoestring buy- 

 ers, who don't know anything more about the fine qualities and highly 

 technical points of furs than they did, when they rushed into gold 

 brick mining in worthless gold shares, or oil wildcatting in wells 

 that never pumped a barrel of oil — get stung, get badly stung ; 

 and quit buying at crazy prices. When gold-briquetting and wa- 

 tered oil failed these gentry, they jumped into furs and rushed off to 

 the wilds of Canada and Siberia and Kamchatka, and because a 

 fur like muskrat or kolinsky had been high in New York when they 

 jumped into the game, they paid the wildest prices to the native 

 fur trapper in his native haunt — were going to 'bust the old com- 

 panies' and all that, you know. Well, they paid $5 for muskrat 

 for which the old fur dealers — wise old wolves — would only pay 

 50 cents. 



"But here's the stumbling point to such tenderfeet in the fur 

 game. Your man new to the game buys, we'll say in the winter 

 of 1919. It is spring of 1920 before he can get the furs so bought 

 out to market ; and it is the fall of 1920 before those furs are dressed, 

 dyed and made up for the retail market. By that time, fashion has 

 shifted from muskrat and seals to foxes and sables. Every man 

 buying those furs on a gamble is stung ; and the next season won't 

 touch muskrat with tongs. The Indians are quick to feel the re- 

 action ; and don't trap muskrat so hard. The fur trade lets up 

 on muskrat; and the muskrat have a chance to multiply. 



"Now the old established companies play the game in another 

 way — play a longer suit if you like to put it that way. The min- 

 ute they discover the fashion has changed for a certain fur, they 

 discourage the trappers from going after that fur. They lower 

 prices ; and if they are caught with a big supply of a certain fur, 

 when the fashion has changed, they put them in cold storage and 



