Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE FUTURE SUPPLY OF FUR Fur bearing animals will be with us forever if they are given half a chance and the man and boy in the country is taught to realize that the fur bearers are his friends and not his enemies. Every man who traps furs or is in anyway interested in furs for profit should see that the fur bearers in his neighborhood are protected and should encourage his neighbors to protect them, and he should preach the gospel of saving and increasing this tremendous source of wealth. The commercial history of America begins with furs, and from the early days down to the present this has been an important article in the domestic and foreign trade. There are few commodities in common use which distribute their benefits so widely. From the country boy who traps a few muskrats to the professional who patrols miles of country, the money received for pelts goes at once into various channels of circulation. Today the great fur centers of the world are in the United States. The amount of capital invested in the fur trade is greater than ever before and many thousands of people in the great cities derive their support from it in the different branches of dressing, dyeing, manufacturing, selling, etc. The investment on the part of dealers, manufacturers and retailers runs into hundreds of millions of dollars. This gigantic industry and this tremendous source of profit to the trapper and the man and boy in the country would of course cease the minute the supply of furs was shut off; and this industry would naturally decline in proportion as the supply of fur declines, or increase as the quantity of furs increases. Therefore it can be readily seen that the future supply of furs is a very important factor and that it is something that well deserves the attention of ev…
