The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1911-01-27

of invention, of progress OF a civilization that
is fast crushing out the last vesttge OF the
primitive and adding each day new chapters
to its own marvellous achievements. 1t seems
like fitting decree of fate that the Oldest
and most romantic of all the industries of
man, with the exception of his earliest fight
for food, should be the last to die. There is
something of pathos in it, especially when it
is pointed out to one as it was pointed out
to me by Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal,
head of the great Hudson's Bay Company,
who said, 1.-THE last chapter in the romance
of fur is being written. It has been a glor-
tous story-a glorious story.
For three thousand years the pelts of wild
beasts have played their part in the lives of
men, For the last ten centuries fur has
played an important part in history. It has
held out the lure Of romance-of adventure
and gold 1t has caused wars, and has led
to the discovery of new lands. Fur hunters
have done more exploring than any other one
class of men. 1t was the beaver that lured
men from the st. Lawrence to the Mississippi,
and thence to the Rockies, opening up a con-
tinent. 1t was the sable that drew the tribes
of Asiat1c Russia across to far Kam-
chatka and the sea otter that led the Span
ish and the English all around the world in
crazy craft, and gave our first knowledge
of the Pacific coast from Alaska to California.
When, away back In 1870, wandering and
adventurous Frenchman by the name of Crosse
lier fired Prince Ruperts imagination with
glowing tales of land filled with priceless
furs, and little company was formed with a
capital Of $4,000, he did not dream that his
wild project meant the opening up of coun-
try almost as large as the whole Of Europe
and the beginning Of an adventure which was
to run through centuries It was this little
Of o1Uo pfI1ror I'M
formed what is today the Hudson's Bay COM
pany, the greatest landed corporation on
earth-sOmething which will remain for all
time in history cenotaph to the tremen-
dous part which the furred things of forest
and mountain and sea have played in the
fortunes Of men.
Last year the raw fur industry of the world
amounted to forty million dollars. Next year
1t will be fifty Million and the year after that
the figures will be larger still. Five years ago
1t was less than twenty millions. Yet in
spite of these figures-in the face of the fact
that the fur-treasure of the world is increas-
ing in value each year, and will continue to
increase for perhaps another decade, the
furred things of the earth are fast becoming
extinct.
year ago big London fur buyer, whose
business amounts to over a million dollars
annually, said to me- within another five
years only very few people of moderate
means will be buying furs Only the wealthy
will be able to afford those furs which are
cheapest today, and even the muskrat, whose
pelt sold for five and six cents few years
ago, will be priced a luxury"
Ten months did much to verify this fur
dealers statements. Within that time raw
pelts advanced from twenty to one hundred
per cent. A Montreal dealer who purchased
$4,000 muskrat skins at twenty cents per skin
year before sold them in London for seven
ty. A month later they had gone to eighty.
Two months later they were bringing dol
lar. In single season the value of the
worlds annual production of fur leaped from
$25, o0o,o0o to over $4oo0o0OO had just
come down from my last trip to the Barren
Lands, where I had spent eight weeks among
the far northern fox hunters, when word was
passed from post to post and from trapper to
trapper throughout hundreds of thousands of
square miles of Canadian wilderness that a
fur famine had struck London and Paris, the
fur centers of the world, and that from Winni-
peg Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal both the
independents and the agents Of the big
companies were making fabulous offers for
pelts.
1t will be interesting to note the conditions
that this famine will bring about during the
next two or three years. Millions Of women
are as yet unaware of what the great fur
dealer have quoted above describes as "the
mine that Is about to explode under their
feet" It cannot be said however that they
have not had some warning. The woman who
bought mink mufr for twenty dollars five
years ago pays sixty for the same grade of
article today; she will pay from seventy to
eighty for it this coming season-a hundred
or more two years from now.
These statements are not made at random,
but only after the closest personal investiga-