The professional world. (Columbia, Mo.) 1901-192?, 1903-02-13
SIBERIA'S FUR INDUSTRY.
The Supply Approaching Exhaustion,
and Prices Rising.

The chief center of the Siberian fur
trade, including that of the Peninsula
of Kamschatka, is IrkutslS. The great
err part of the fells here collected from
hunters and trappers are bear, glutton,
lynx, elk, reindeer, stag, m~usK-deer,
fox, sable, marten, mink, ermine, pole
cat, squirrel, Alpine wols, blue and sill
yer fox and one or two kinds of wild
cat indigenous to Kamschatka. The
Siberian black hare is not now so often
found on the Irkutsk market. All kinds
of furred skins have advanced in value
during the last few years. A blue fox
fur now brings about 80 rubleS at IT.
kutsk, and that figure is enhanced when
a pair of perfect skins are offered, the
price running up to as much as 800 ru-
bles for the two fells. From lrkutsk
the furs are, in the first instance, chief
ly distributed between the two fairs at
I<irensk and Vercholensk, and thence
they find their way to the principal fur
marts in western Europe. Many of the
English, French and German furriers
send buyers to Irkutsk. 1t has lately
been shown, however, that n sell
dom buys at first hand, even in that
Siberian center. The most valuable
furs bought at Irkutsk from merchants
who profess to retain their own hunters
and trappers have, as a matter of fact,
come through two or three pairs of bar
tering hands. 1t would not be a very
difficult matter for the Western buyers
who travel all the way to Irkutsk to go
a little further, and establish trading
relations at first hand with the trap
pers and trapping S~yndicates. An enor-
nous economy would be effected by
such direct trading.
Siberia, to which the civilized world
has long looked as n of the two
chief sources of the fur supply, Is be-
ginning, as our Odessa correspondent
informs us, to find that the output no
longer equals the demand, so that dur
ing the last few years all kinds Of
furred skins have advanced in price.
For ages the lonely forests and tundras
of Siberia offered an ample protection
to a host of wild animals, but the Rus
sian from across the Urals brought with
him, long afterward, the road and the
railway. Communication has become
easier, towns have sprung up, markets
have been opened; the Cossack has be-
gun to traverse regions where once the
Samoyede, Ostiak, or fungus wandered
uIdisturbed, and skins are freely ex-
cAEEged for suhdry luxuries, from the
White Cars land. The usual result
IS followed, and in almost every part
7 Siberia-as in North America, the
; der great reproducing region-skins
aud game are alike becoming percepti-
bly, rarer. Moreover, the task of col
lecting furs for the market is more
than ever subdivided. Irkutsk is the
chief center of the trade, but, as that
is now a fiourishing town, with over
SO, 900 inhabitants on the long line of
the Trans-Siberian railway, we may be
sure that little profitable hunting can
he done within many a league of ii. In
fact, the enormous area of Siberia has
hitherto made intermediates between
the trapper and the exporter a necessi-
tv. and II they become exorbitant in
their demands, 1t may be worth while
TO establish direct dealing with the
hunter. Another center is Yakutsk, far
away to the northeast, the chief place
of a province almost as large as Eu-
rope. excluding Russia, and still so
thinly populated that 20 years ago each
person might have been allowed seven
square miles.