Well-dressed furs as clothing furnish a maximum of warmth with a minimum of weight, due to the air entangled among the hairs, excelling any practicable garment of cloth of the same shape. Their durability varies greatly, however. Jones gives a long table ex hibiting the comparative value of most furs in this respect. The otters, both land and sea, are the most durable, and are reckoned at 100 per cent. Others follow: Beaver, .90; seal, .75; raccoon, .70; skunk, .70; Persian lamb, .65; martens and sable, .60 to .40; fox, .40; muskrat and opossum, .37; nutria, .27; and others from .25 down to hare or rabbit only .5. These facts should be borne in mind in purchasing any article made of fur.
The dyeing of furs is a distinct branch of the industry which heretofore has been almost wholly in German hands, except that until re cently all seal-skins were dyed and otherwise dressed in England. Now, however, much of this preparation is done in Canada and the United States. The Bureau of Manufactures recorded that the value of the seal-skins pre pared in this country in 1916 was $74,530.
Almost every sort of fur, raw as well as manufactured, has quadrupled in price during the last 30 years, although with many fluctua tions. Coincidently, the demand for, and utilization of, furs in garments, and as trim mings, has enormously increased since the be ginning of the present century. Political dis turbances in Europe, and especially religious persecution, caused the emigration to western Europe, and to North America, of great num bers of workmen skilled in the preparation and sewing of skins and furs. This influx of com paratively cheap, yet competent labor, and other influences, led the capitalists of the trade, in concert with the controllers of fashion, to stimulate, and then to cope with, an unprece dented expansion in the use of ornamental furs — even in summer. This was followed by the setting up, almost wholly, as is natural, by Russian and Polish Jews, of thousands of small factories in every large town, Mean while the decreasing supply of first-class skins, competition resulting from the wide diffusion of business and much doubtful responsibility, and the great demand for showy appearance at a cheap rate, have led to a sad disguising and counterfeiting materials by means of dye ing, manipulation and the invention of trade names.
The deceptive misnaming of furs is en couraged by the ignorance of buyers, most of whom are willing to believe it when told by an unscrupulous salesman that a cape or muff offered at a ridiculously small price is true sable or seal or other rare and ex pensive article. It will be interesting and use
ful to mention some of the frauds constantly perpetrated — though less so than formerly. Take, for instance, sable. Precisely, it is the pelt of the Siberian marten, of which only about 75,000 skins were received annually previous to 1914, worth wholesale perhaps a million dollars. The price of even a small cape of Russian sables must be reckoned in three or four figures. But experts tell us that most °sables) in the fur-shops are made of dyed skins of the Canadian or pine marten, or of polecat, or mink, or plucked skunk ("Alaska sable"), muskrat, marmot, hare or even rabbit. Genuine sealskin now has a price far beyond the reach of ordinary purses; but when the fur-dressers produced a clipped and dyed musk rat pelt that resembled sealskin almost per fectly it could be sold far cheaper—not, how ever, under its own name. Consequently this popular, and even now, high-priced product is sold as "Hudson Bay seal" (no true fur-seals live or ever did live in Hudson Bay; and the seals that do live there are not used). The fur of the common wild rabbit of Europe and elsewhere is the raw material of ((electric seal," seal" and 'Baltic seal." The rabbit and hare indeed may become almost any thing in the hands of fur-dressers and sales men. When white it may masquerade as coney, ermine, white fox, "mock fox" or 'chinchilla," and when dyed may become seal of various trade varieties, sable or French sable, fox, lynx, marten, fisher, chinchilla and "muskrat-coney." Skunk fur was formerly dis guised under more elegant names as Alaska sable, black marten, etc., but its beauty and really excellent quality have become recognized and it is now sold for what it is; and curiously the Australian wallaby (a kangaroo) often figures in the market as skunk. Nutria, the fur of a South American aquatic rodent, is so nearly like beaver and otter, that it ekes out those rare skins without much harm; but it also becomes 'seal." Black domestic cats are valuable as fur-bearers and their coats go to market as "genet," and the ponies and great dogs of Tibet, Manchuria and western China furnish thousands of shaggy hides to the modern furrier. Finally the demand for furs of high class is being met by breeding in captivity foxes, martens, skunks, Astrakan sheep and other animals yielding valuable pelts.
The United States is not only a large pro ducer, but the greatest consumer of furs. Our export of skins in 1916 were valued at $9,288,786, and our imports of furs and fur manufactures at $16,891,699.