28 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



don't glut the market and don't buy any more of that fur. The slow- 

 ing up is felt all down the line from my lady on Fifth Avenue, or 

 Hyde Park, London, to a lonely Indian on Hudson Bay. I, myself, 

 was once caught with 100,000 beautiful muskrats for which I had 

 paid 50 to 90 cents. I could not sell them for 90 cents and had to 

 hold them for five years and feed them out to the trade gradually. 

 I know instances where fur buyers have been loaded with millions 

 of pounds of rabbit; and 'near seal' took a slump, or there was a 

 warm winter, or there were hard times, and those Australian and 

 Belgian rabbits almost ruined the fur buyer, ate his head off in in- 

 terest charges, just as the live rabbit had become a pest in Australia. 



"Of all the world's industries, fur trading is the oldest, the trick- 

 iest, the most technical, subject to the most shifts of whim and 

 finance. It is a game for wise old wolves, not new tenderfeet and 

 fly-by-night gamblers. 



"Mind I do not say we do not need to conserve furs. We do. 

 We are doing a selling trade — local and foreign — in furs to-day of 

 from 70 million to 100 million dollars, where we were doing a fur 

 trade of only 17 to 20 millions before the War. With fox skins selling 

 all the way from $200 for cross fox to $1225 for silver — as they did 

 the other day in Montreal — where they used to sell for from $15 

 down to $5 or up to #200, women who buy furs should exercise 

 the same care and discrimination and judgment and knowledge as a 

 connoisseur of rarest jewels. Furs are going to be just as much a 

 mark of good taste as jewels or objects of art. Like jewels, you do 

 not buy them for one season, but for a life time, and if you take proper 

 care of them, you could buy them for two or three generations of 

 wearers. 



"Get this point clear — reputable fur dealers have no more desire 

 to sail under false colors than reputable jewellers. When furs are 

 dyed imitations of rare furs, the reputable dealer tells the customer 

 so. Hudson seal is dyed, especially treated very fine muskrat. 

 Near seal is dyed, especially treated coney and rabbit. Black sable 

 is lustrous skunk. Fisher defies imitation but is often mistaken by 



