Bedford inquirer. [volume] (Bedford, Pa.) 1857-1884, 1867-10-11
GIGANTIC MONOPOLY.

George Alfred Townsend, writing from
Canada to the Boston Post, makes the fol-
lowing curious statement concerning the
Hudson Bay Company: "What is the gigan-
tic monopoly, with two-thirds of a continent
for its game preserve? Whence come this
modern Nimrod, staying his millions Of bea-
yer and buffalo every year? Are we aware
that upon this hemisphere there is a private
corporation owning nearly as much land as
the United States? This is the Hudson s
Bay Company, founded in 1910, sixty years
before d house stood in Baltimore, twelve
years before the Quakers sailed up the Del
aware, and three years before Boston had a
wharf King Charles II made the Hudson 3
Bay Company arbitrary and despotic over
all the region watered by the streams Of
Hudson's Bay, and for two centuries its
Governors have shut all this world away
from civilized mankind. They have lied as
to its capacity for cultivation, preferred to
keep it a heather wild for the hiding of
wolves and catamounts, and the English
Government has backed them up, to the
wrong of the Canadian people, who have
just been excluded from the fairest of the
Northern lands. This enormous monopoly
employs 5000 white men to haul its boats
and make up its furs, and 100000 Indian
hunters. With two million seven hundred
thousand square miles under its control, on
Is l20, 900 people live in it. For ITO years
it paid annual dividends of seventy percent.
As far back as 16S9-a hundred years be-
fore our Government organized-it paid div
idends of fifty per cent. 1t ate up rival
fur company, the Northwestern, J." about
forty years ago, and in 1865 sold one million
two hundred thousand gold dollars worth Of
furs, which cost it in imports only two hun
dred thousand dollars. 1t has one hundred
and sixty-four trading posts, is subject to
no law, warns people of its immense estate
as you would warn a man out of your Office,
and protests that grain shall not grow in
the hauuts of the raccoon, nor prayers be
said where the lynx crunches the bones Of
the Indian squaw. This association Of deer
slayers killed IN 1856, 10000 beavers, l6l,-
GOO martens, 1000 lynxes, 10000 bears,
$4,000 foxes, 10000 muskrats, $4,000 OF
ters, $4,000 skunks, and about $4,000 lesser
animals, besides 10000 bufaloes. 1t gives
the Indian pint of glass beads and bot
tie Of rum for a silver fox skin, which itsells
for $3.50 in gold. 1t steals, besides, from
United States lands, $500, 600 gold in furs
every year, and we ought to have had
military post on Red River twenty years
aro. At the north end OF Lake Wlnnepeg
eiIvre is a nlaa. esIloA Norway House, where
the Governors of five sub-territories meet
Governor Dallas, commander over the nigh
ty region, and the spoil of the yearis prompt
ly divided and the Indians duly swindled.
The hunts for buffalo are two in number,
each lasting two months, and begin respec-
lively June 20 and November 10. The cap
ital of the company is seven millions of gold
dollars, and they own a million gold dollars
worth of property in American Oregon, Sc
cured to them by the treaty of 1916.
This cormorant company is now a stun
bling block in the way Of progress. 1t is a
dark age romance to see It's canoes come
down the rapids freighted with furs; to see
its files Of half. breeds disappear into the for
ests where all the long year the Indian has
been Staying the game, making a bloody
wilderness war, lying in ambush against the
wolf, aud challenging the white bear to sin
gle combat. At last the long period of his
hunting IS over; the overflow of thirty mil
lions Of people will make a freshet up the
streams of the Winnepeg to drown out beast
and slayer toge ther, and take by the throat
the uncircumcised corporation that would
plant its ayarice across the gates of hem
isphere and turn back tie sluices Of man
kind.