4 o THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



to prevent rips and tears. The deep fluffy, costly furs like sable and 

 marten and mink must be kept absolutely moth proof in cedar 

 chest, or rolled in tar paper with moth balls, or best of all, stored 

 insured in cold storage rooms, where the temperature will prevent 

 the deposit or breeding of moths' eggs. 



If such care is taken of furs by the fur wearer, there will be no 

 quarrel between the fur buyer and the lover of wild life ; for furs 

 so kept will soon bring each fur to its point of "saturation" so that 

 for a season the muskrat will not call for it and the fur animals will 

 replenish themselves. Also high-priced furs bought with the dis- 

 crimination of a connoisseur in jewels or pictures will forever rule 

 off the market furs taken when they are not prime ; for furs taken 

 when they are not prime shed hairs and rip when fleshed and have 

 to be chemically treated before they can be marketed. In all the 

 States of the Union and in all the Provinces of Canada to-day 

 furs taken when not prime are confiscated and the trappers heavily 

 fined. Good hunters spare the mothers and take only the ravenous 

 young males, whose cruel depredations among themselves perpetrate 

 more deaths than man has ever invented. You have to know only 

 the habits of the wolf with its mate, or the wolverine, or the mink, 

 or the ermine, or the Alaska seal, when the young males fight for 

 their mates and destroy the pups — to realize that fur trading pur- 

 sued scientifically as the big companies pursue it purely to conserve 

 their own resources — is infinitely more merciful than nature's 

 law of claw and tooth red in blood. 



The guilty rascal in the fur trade is the irresponsible gambler, 

 who has been playing Nevada gold or Texas oil, and seeing the ad- 

 vance in the price of furs rushes into the fur game offering such prices 

 that irresponsible hunters go out to kill to the point of extermination. 

 These gentry ignorant of game life kill prime and unprime, young 

 and old, male and female ; but when the unprime comes to market, 

 if the skins are rejected by buyers, who purchase with the care that 

 they would an art object or a jewel, "these gentry" are stung, and 

 poachers, who are gamblers, are driven out of the fur trade. 



