THE TRAFFIC IN FEATHERS 

 for profit, for not only were they found in vast num- 

 bers, but they were comparatively easy to shoot. 

 Ten cents apiece was the price paid, and so lucrative 

 a business did the shooting of these birds become that 

 many baymen gave up their usual occupation of 

 sailing pleasure parties and became gunners. These 

 men often earned as much as one hundred dollars 

 a week for their skill with the shotgun. 



It is not surprising that at the end of the season 

 a local observer reported: "One cannot help no- 

 ticing now the scarcity of Terns on the New Jersey 

 coast, and it is all owing to their merciless destruc- 

 tion." One might go further and give the sickening 

 details of how the birds were swept from the mud 

 flats about the mouth of the Mississippi and the 

 innumerable shell lumps of the Chandeleurs and the 

 Breton Island region; how the Great Lakes were 

 bereft of their feathered life, and the swamps of the 

 Kankakee were invaded; how the White Pelicans, 

 Western Grebes, Caspian Terns, and California 

 Gulls of the West were butchered and their skinned 

 [145] 



