[TO THE EDITOR Or THE "EPECTLTOR."1
Massingham's letter in your issue of June 12th calls for some remarks, which I will endeavour to make as brief as possible. He says, with his usual politeness of language, that it is part of the " unscrupulous propaganda " of the feather industry that it should give the number of its employees affected by the Plumage Bill as 3,000, when only a fourth or a fifth of them are exclusively employed in the fancy feather trade, which it is the purpose of the Bill to suppress. My reply is that the fancy feather branch and the ostrich feather branch of the industry cannot be separated in the simple way Mi. Massingham supposes, that the two are interdependent, and that to destroy the one is first to dislocate and then to ruin the other.
In his quite pardonable ignorance of the actual conditions of the industry Mr. Massingham declares that the trade in ostrich plumage " is protected and encouraged by the Bill." That is not the view of anybody, whether importer, broker, merchant, or manufacturer, who is engaged in the business. All who are in the ostrich feather trade are at one in opposing the Bill on the ground that it will drive not merely the fancy feather trade, but the trade in ostrich feathers, away from London. France has protested against the Bill; Venezuela is alienated by it; the workers in the British feather industry are deeply apprehensive that their livelihood is to be taken from them. To all this the supporters of the Plumage Bill pay no attention whatever. But I should think that at least they would hesitate before they force a great South African industry to seek its market outside of England.
The feather trade is as strongly against cruelty and as anxious to preserve every form of bird-life as Mr. Massingham himself; and it claims that its existence and its obvious interest in securing an abundance of supplies acts as a preventive of cruelty and a stimulus to the protection and multiplication of the birds. Sir Harry Johnston is a strong supporter of the Plumage Bill, yet he acknowledged the other day that had it not been for the ostrich feather industry the South African ostrich would to-day be as extinct as the dodo. The same agency is producing the same results in the case of the egret and the bird of paradise. Mr. Massingham affects to pooh-pooh. the legislation which in Venezuela protects the egret and makes it a penal offence to shoot it during nesting time. But the reality and the effectiveness of these laws, which are adminis- tered in co-operation with the local landowners, all of whose interests lie on the side of preserving the egret, have been testified to by the Venezuelan Foreign Minister, by the Governor of the State which the birds mainly frequent during the breeding season, and by the Venezuelan Minister Pleni- potentiary in London. All the information which the trade has at its disposal points to the conclusion that the egret in Vene- zuela is most carefully and successfully protected, that there is to-day practically no cruelty whatever in its treatment, and that the species is mot only in no danger of extinction, but is rapidly increasing. I desire to state publicly and emphatically that at least 80 per cent. of the egret feathers exported here from Venezuela are not feathers that have been plucked from the living birds or taken from the dead ones, but feathers that the birds themselves have shed in the course of nature.
In regard to the bird of paradise, Mr. Massingham ought to know that only the males of this species are shot for their plumage; that they do not acquire these feathers until their third year, and that by then they have already paired once, if not twice. Can any sensible man believe for a moment that under these circumstances the species is threatened with exter- mination?
The feather industry in Great Britain, which is conducted (though I am sure he will never believe it) by men who are just as humane and as reputable as Mr. Massingham himself, deeply resents the attempt to destroy it by snap votes in the House of Commons, the prejudices of misinformed sentiment, and the dissemination of baseless charges of cruelty and exter- mination. It courts the fullest inquiry into all its operations, and it is prepared to co-operate with any society or any GOvern- ment for the better protection and preservation of all forms of bird-life. But it is justly opposed to a Bill which, if it becomes law, will destroy a British trade without attaining one of the humanitarian objects which its supporters are sincerely but blindly pursuing.—I am, Sir, &c.,
J. E. H. BAKER, Ron. Sec. the Ostrich and Fancy Feather Trade Association. 27-31 Earl Street, Finsbury Square, London, B.C. 2.
Previous page
