ur estimate to give a fair grade ourselves?

This, comrades, we should always be careful to do, and then we should
never ship our furs only to parties who are willing to hold them
until they have quoted what price they can pay for the bunch. If the
prices are not satisfactory, the fur dealer should have agreed with
the shipper before the furs were shipped to him to pay one-half of
all express charges, and either return the furs to the shipper or to
any house in their city that the shipper may designate.

Now, comrades, make some such bargain with your dealer, and if you do
not get a square deal do not be shy in giving the transaction with
the dealer's name.

* * *

Comrades of the trap line, come down to camp and let us talk over
this question of the fast disappearance of the furbearing animals.
The fact of timber becoming scarce has made nearly every one
timber-mad--no, that is not right, I mean money-mad--and they wish to
secure this money through the fast increasing value of timber. In the
late sixties, right here in sight of where I am sitting, I saw as
nice white pine cut and put into log heaps, burned up for the purpose
of clearing the land, as ever grew.

Now, boys, I liken the trapper and the dig-'em-out and the dog-hunter
to our ancestors in the wasting of timber, only our ancestors at that
time could not see the value of the timber that they were wasting.
The trapper, the dig 'em-out and the dog-hunter are all money-mad,
made so by the high prices of fur. But unlike our ancestors, the
trapper, dig'em-out and dog-hunter should be able to see the folly in
taking the furbearers when in an unprime condition, because we all
know the difference in the value of a fox, a skunk, a mink, or the
skin of any other fur-bearing animal taken in September or late in
the spring when unprime, than the same skins would be worth if taken
in November or any month during the winter.

I trapped in three different states in the South last season (1912)
and I met with trappers and dog-hunters who admitted that they
trapped and hunted in September. We saw one trapper who had four
large mink also quite a bunch of other furs, consisting of coon,
muskrats, civet and skunk; the trapper said that the mink were caught
last September or the first of October. He wanted six dollars for the
four mink. Just think of those four large mink being offered for six
dollars and he could not get a buyer at that price. The rest of his
early caught