CHAPTER XIIIEXTERMINATION OF BIRDS FOR WOMEN'S HATS[D]
CHAPTER XIII
EXTERMINATION OF BIRDS FOR WOMEN'S HATS[D]
It is high time for the whole civilized world to know that many of the most beautiful and remarkable birds of the world are now beingexterminatedto furnish millinery ornaments for women's wear. The mass of new information that we have recently secured on this traffic from the headquarters of the feather trade is appalling. Previously, I had not dreamed that conditions are half as bad as they are.
It is entirely fitting that on this subject New York should send a message to London. New York is almost a Spotless Town in plume-free millinery, and London and Paris are the worst places in the world. We have cleaned house. With but extremely slight exceptions, the blood of the slaughtered innocents is no longer upon our skirts, and on the subject of plumage millinery we have a right to be just as Pharisaical as we choose.
Here in New York (and also in New Jersey) no man may sell, own for sale or offer for sale the plumage of any wild American bird other than a game bird. More than that, the plumage of no foreign bird belonging to any bird family represented in the fauna of North America can be sold here! There are only a few kinds of improper "millinery" feathers that it is possible to sell here under the law. Thanks to the long and arduous campaign of the National Association of Audubon Societies, founded and for ten years directed by gallant William Dutcher, you now see on the streets of New York very, very little wild-bird plumage save that from game birds.
It is true that a few servant girls are now wearing the cast-off aigrettes of their mistresses; but they are only as one in a thousand. At Atlantic City there is said to be a fine display of servant-girl and ladies-maid aigrettes. In New York and New Jersey, in Pennsylvania for everything save the sale of heron and egret plumes (a privilege obtained by a bunko game), in Massachusetts, and in many other of our States, the wild-birds'-plumage millinery business is dead. Two years ago, when the New York legislature refused to repeal the Dutcher law, the Millinery Association asserted, and brought a cloud of witnesses to Albany to prove, that the enforcement of the law would throw thousands of operatives out of employment.
BEAUTIFUL AND CURIOUS BIRDS NOW BEING DESTROYED FOR THE FEATHER TRADE—(I)
The law is in effect; and the aigrette business is dead in this state. Have any operatives starved, or been thrown out of employment? We have heard of none. They are now at work making very pretty hat ornaments of silk and ribbons, and gauze and lace; and "Theyare wearing them."
1600 HUMMINGBIRD SKINS AT 2 CENTS EACH!
Part of Lot Purchased by the Zoological Society at the Regular Quarterly London Millinery Feather Sale, August, 1912.
But even while these words are being written, there is one large fly in the ointment. The store-window of E. &. S. Meyers, 688 Broadway, New York, contains aboutsix hundred plumes and skins of birds of paradise for sale for millinery purposes. No wonder the great bird of paradise is now almost extinct! Their sale here is possible because the Dutcher law protects from the feather dealers only the birds that belong to avian families represented in the United States. With fiendish cunning and enterprise, the shameless feather dealers are ferreting out the birds whose skins and plumes may legally be imported into this countryand sold; but we will meet that with a law that will protect all foreign birds, so far as we are concerned. Now it is time for the universal enactment of a law which will prohibit the sale and use as ornaments of the plumage, feathers or skins ofanywild bird that is not a legitimate game bird.
London is now the head of the giant octopus of the "feather trade" that has reached out its deadly tentacles into the most remote wildernesses of the earth, and steadily is drawing in the "skins" and "plumes" and "quills" of the most beautiful and most interestingunprotectedbirds of the world. The extent of this cold-blooded industry, supported by vain and hard-hearted women, will presently be shown in detail. Paris is the great manufacturing center of feather trimming and ornaments, and the French people obstinately refuse to protect the birds from extermination, because their slaughter affords employment to a certain numbers of French factory operatives.
All over the world where they have real estate possessions, the men of England know how to protect game from extermination. The English are good at protecting game—when they decide to set about it.
Why should London be the Mecca of the feather-killers of the world?
It is easily explained:
(1) London has the greatest feather market in the world; (2) the feather industry "wants the money"; and (3) the London feather industry is willing to spend money in fighting to retain its strangle-hold on the unprotected birds of the world.
Let us run through a small portion of the mass of fresh evidence before us. It will be easier for the friends of birds to read these details here than to procure them at first hand, as we have done.
The first thing that strikes one is the fact that the feather-hunters are scatteredall over the world where bird life is plentifuland there are no laws to hinder their work. I commend to every friend of birds this list of the species whose plumage is to-day being bought and sold in large quantities every year in London. To the birds of the world this list is of deadly import, for it spells extermination.
The reader will notice that it is the way of the millinery octopus to reach out to the uttermost ends of the earth, and take everything that it can use. From the trackless jungles of New Guinea, round the world both ways to the snow-capped peaks of the Andes, no unprotected bird is safe. The humming-birds of Brazil, the egrets of the world at large, the rare birds of paradise, the toucan, the eagle, the condor and the emu, all are beingexterminatedto swell the annual profits of the millinery trade. The case isfarmore serious than the world at large knows, or even suspects. But for the profits, the birds would be safe; and no unprotected wild species can long escape the hounds of Commerce.
But behold the list of rare, curious and beautiful birds that are today in grave peril:
BEAUTIFUL AND CURIOUS BIRDS NOW BEING DESTROYED FOR THE FEATHER TRADE—(II)
In order to throw a spot-light on the most recent transactions in the London wild-birds'-plumage market, and to furnish a clear idea of what is to-day going on in London, Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam, I will set out in some detail the report of an agent whom I engaged to ascertain the London dealings in the plumage of wild birds that were killed especially to furnish that plumage. As one item, let us take the sales in London in February, May and October, 1911, because they bring the subject well down to date. My agent's explanatory note is as follows:
"These three sales represent six months. Very nearly double this quantity is sold by these four firms in a year. We must also take into consideration that all the feathers are not brought to the London market, and thatvery large shipments are also made direct to the raw-feather dealers and manufacturers of Paris and Berlin, and that Amsterdam also gets large quantities from the West Indies. For your purpose, I report upon three sales, at different periods of the year 1911, and as those sales do not vary much, you will be able to judge the consumption of birds in a year."
The "aigrettes" of the feather trade come from egrets, and, being very light, it requires the death of several birds to yield one ounce. In many catalogues, the word "albatross" stands for the jabiru, a nearly-exterminated species of giant stork, inhabiting South America. "Rhea" often stands for vulture plumage.
If the feather dealers had deliberately attempted to form an educational list of the most beautiful and the most interesting birds of the world, they could hardly have done better than they have done in the above list. If it were in my power to show the reader a colored plate of each species now being exterminated by the feather trade, he would be startled by the exhibit. That the very choicest birds of the whole avian world should be thus blotted out at the behest of vain and heartless women is a shame, a disgrace and world-wide loss.
If I am correctly informed, the London feather trade admits that it requires six egrets to yield one "ounce" of aigrette plumes. This being the case, the 21,528 ounces sold as above stand for 129,168 egrets killed for nine months' supply of egret plumes, for London alone.
The total number of bird corpses auctioned during these three sales is as follows:
It is to be remembered that the sales listed above cover the transactions of four firms only, and do not in any manner take into account the direct importations from Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam of manufacturers and other dealers. The defenders of the feather trade are at great pains to assure the world that in the monthly, bi-monthly and quarterly sales, feathers often appear in the market twice in the same year; and this statement is made for them in order to be absolutely fair. Recent examinations of the plume catalogues for an entire year, marked with the pricepaidfor each item, reveals very few which are blank, indicating no sale! The subtractions of the duplicated items would alter the result only very slightly.
The full extent of England's annual consumption of the plumage of wild birds slaughtered especially for the trade never has been determined. I doubt whether it is possible to ascertain it. The information that we have is so fragmentary that in all probability it reflects only a small portion of the whole truth, but for all that, it is sufficient to prove the case of the Defenders of the Birdsvs. the London Chamber of Commerce.
The above does not take into account the feathers from game birds received in England from France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Belgium and the Netherlands.
As a final side-light on the quantity of egret and heron plumes offered and sold in London during the twelve months ending in April, 1912, we offer the following exhibit:
BEAUTIFUL AND CURIOUS BIRDS NOW BEING DESTROYED FOR THE FEATHER TRADE—(III)
Under the head of "Hummingbirds Not Wanted," Mr. Downham is at great pains to convey[F]the distinct impression that to-day hummingbirds are scorned by the feather trade, and the demand for them is dead.I believed him—until my agent turned in the following statement:
It is useless for anyone to assert that these birds were merely "offered," and not actually sold, as Mr. Downham so laboriously explains is the regular course with hummingbird skins; for that will deceive no intelligent person. The statement published above comes to me direct, from an absolutely competent and reliable source.
Undoubtedly the friends of birds, and likewise their enemies, will be interested in the prices at which the skins of the most beautiful birds of the world are sold in London, prior to their annihilation by the feather industry. I submit the following exhibit, copied from the circular of Messrs. Lewis & Peat. It is at least of academic interest.
Many thoughts are suggested by these London lists of bird slaughter and loot.
It will be noticed that the breast of the grebe has almost wholly disappeared from the feather market and from women's hats. The reason is that there are no longer enough birds of that group to hold a place in the London market! Few indeed are the Americans who know that from 1900 to 1908 the lake region of southern Oregon was the scene of the slaughter of uncountable thousands of those birds, which continued until the grebes were almost exterminated.
When the wonderful lyre-bird of Australia had been almost exterminated for its tail feathers, its open slaughter was stopped by law, and a heavy fine was imposed on exportation, amounting, I have been told, to $250 for each offense. My latest news of the lyre-bird was of the surreptitious exportation of 200 skins to the London feather market.
In India, the smuggling outward of the skins of protected birds is constantly going on. Occasionally an exporter is caught and fined; but that does not stop the traffic.
Bird-lovers must now bid farewell forever to all the birds of paradise. Nothing but the legal closing of the world's markets against their plumes and skins can save any of them. They never were numerous; nor does any species range over a wide area. They are strictly insular, and the island homes of some of them are very small. Take the great bird of paradise (Paradisea apoda) as an illustration. On Oct. 2, 1912, at Indianapolis, Indiana, a city near the center of the United States, in three show-windows within 100 feet of the headquarters of the Fourth National Conservation Congress, I counted 11 stuffed heads and 11 complete sets of plumes of this bird, displayed for sale. The prices ranged from $30 to $47.50 each! And while I looked, a large lady approached, pointed her finger at the remains of a greater bird of paradise, and with grim determination, said to her shopping companion: "There! I want one o' them, an' I'm agoin' tohaveit, too!"
Says Mr. James Buckland in "Pros and Cons of the Plumage Bill":
"Mr. Goodfellow has returned within the last few weeks from a second expedition to new Guinea.... One can now walk, he states, miles and miles through the former haunts of these birds [of paradise] withoutseeing or hearing even the commonest species. When I reflect on this sacrilege, I am lost in wonder at the apathy of the British public."
Mr. Carl Hagenbeck wrote me only three months ago that "the condors of the Andes are all being exterminated for their feathers, and these birds are now very difficult to obtain."
The egret and heron plumes, known under the trade name of "osprey, etc., feathers," form by far the most important item in each feather sale. There arefifteengrades! They are sold by the ounce, and the prices range all the way from twenty-eight cents per ounce for "mixed heron" totwo hundred and twenty-five shillings($45.60) per ounce for the best Brazilian "short selected," on February 7, 1912! Is it any wonder that in Philadelphia the prices of finished aigrettes, ready to be worn, runs from $20 to $125!
The plumes that run up into the big figures are the "short selected" coming from the following localities, and quoted at the prices set down here in shillings and pence. Count the shilling at twenty-four cents, United States money.
The total offering of these "short selected" plumes in December 1911, was 689 ounces, and in February, 1912, it was 230 ounces.
Now with these enormous prices prevailing, is it any wonder that the egrets and herons are being relentlessly pursued to the uttermost ends of the earth? I think that any man who really knows the habits of egrets and herons, and the total impossibility of any quantity of their shed feathers being picked up in a marketable state, must know in his heart that if the London and continental feather markets keep open a few years longer,every speciesthat furnishes "short selected" plumes will be utterly exterminated from off the face of the earth.
Let the English people make no mistake about this, nor be fooled by any fairy tales of the feather trade about Venezuelan "garceros," and vast quantities of valuable plumes picked off the bushes and out of the mud. Those carefully concocted egret-farm stories make lovely reading, but the reader who examines the evidence will soon decide the extent of their truthfulness. I think that they contain not even ten per cent of truth; and I shall not rest until the stories of Leon Laglaize and Mayeul Grisol have been put to the test in the regions where they originated.
Afewplumes may be picked out of the jungle, yes; but as for anycommercial quantity, it is at present beyond belief. Besides, we have direct, eye-witness testimony to the contrary.