CHAPTER IV 



FALSE FURS AND FAKE TRADE NAMES 



It is a mistake to regard misleading trade names as a proof of 

 the perverse dishonesty of the furrier. With the coming of the great 

 fur markets to the United States and Canada has also come a con- 

 certed movement to eliminate misleading trade names and to grade 

 furs to such fixed standards that any buyer who takes the trouble 

 can know exactly what value he is getting for his money. 



The misleading trade names arose in the first place from the ig- 

 norance of the small furrier and of the retail merchant of the real 

 character of his own wares. Two examples have been given of 

 this — the fur dresser, who on a bet failed to distinguish Alaska seal 

 from Hudson seal, which is muskrat; and the Northern trader, 

 who failed to tell a first class Belgian torn cat from fisher. If experts 

 failed to distinguish true from false, how could the small retailer be 

 expected to know ? Especially, how could a salesman, who had 

 never seen a wild fur-bearing animal in his life, be expected to know ? 

 And with a buyer, who did not know goat from wolf, and a seller, 

 who got a premium for pushing up his total of sales each day, false 

 furs and fake trade names got their strangle-hold on the market. 



The second cause of misleading trade names was directly the 

 fault of the public. There was a day — we all remember it — when 

 coon skin was the official badge of "the cabby," or the liveried 

 winter coachman. These were cheap, ragged-looking "coon," re- 

 tailing at #25 to $45 a coat, cap and gauntlets to match ; but that 

 quality of coon destroyed the value of good coon on the market. 

 What matter if a coachman's coon were an unprime, faded, dirty yel- 

 low striped fur, and good prime coon were a fur glossy and silky as 



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