CHAPTER V 



FUR FARMING TO SUPPLY THE WORLD DEMAND FOR 

 FURS — SILVER FOX 



Fur farming is the most hopeful and fascinating phase of the 

 fur trade to-day. 



You can call it by any name you like; but when human care 

 of a fur-bearing species supplies the world with over three million 

 lamb skin coats a year, transforms a whole province like Prince 

 Edward Island into a silver fox farm, increases the number of buffalo 

 in one park from a few hundred to 5000 in ten years, changes the 

 skunk into a domestic pet though it can change neither the odor nor 

 the stripes, brings back the number of beaver from a rarity to almost 

 a pest, and restores the depleted Alaska Seal Islands to the yearly 

 production of 100,000 pelts a season, equal to the best days of the seal 

 fisheries — fur farming has come to stay. It has also become a 

 mighty important factor in the fur trade. 



Ten years ago, the greatest authorities on the fur trade were 

 saying fur farming couldn't be done. To-day, they are asking — 

 will it be overdone like the tulip craze of Europe ? If a whole 

 province goes into silver fox farming, won't it be overdone so that 

 prices will slump and the farms lose profit and so be forced out of 

 business ? If ten years' government care of Alaska seals has 

 increased the fur output of the rookeries from a few thousands to 

 a hundred thousand — which is the expectation by 1922 — won't 

 seals become as common as muskrats ? To which the most ob- 

 vious answer is, if furs as beautiful as silver fox and Alaska seal 



so 



