FUR BUYERS AT EDMONTON.

knowledge, how these writers dare refer to "blood-hounds" in a country where no dog exists but the husky; or call travel difficult in a land where "fur traders could as easily go from Edmonton to Klondike as a postman could go his daily rounds in an Eastern town." At the time that article appeared, I was camping in the fur country storm stead at Cumberland Lake, and had to hang my boots on my tent post to keep them from being eaten at night not by huskieshuskies have much better manners-but by the mongrel packs locally known as "the string band," half wolf-hound half bloodhound bred by the fur traders for length and speed of limb in the traces, which rove Northern woods in ravening hordes. My guide, camped down at the big beached canoe, happened to be the man whom the Government had selected to pilot a path from Edmonton to Klondike. Not a man alive ever went through to the gold field that way. He happened to be one of the men who came back alive. Most of the others didn't. So much for Pullman car expert knowledge on the West.

Take a map of the Northern fur country. Take a good look at it-not just a Pullman car glance. The Canadian Government, to whom I am proud to owe allegiance and have more than once contributed facts for their official publications, have again and again advertised thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of acres of free land. Latitudinally, that is perfectly true. Wheat-wise, it

isn't.

When you go seventy miles north of Saskatchewan River (barring Peace River in sections) you are in a climate that will grow wheat all rightsplendid wheat, the hardest and finest in the world. That is, twenty hours of sunlight-not day light but sun light-force growth rapidly enough to escape late spring and early fall frosts; but the plain fact of the matter is, wheat land does not exist north of the Saskatchewan except in sections along Peace River. What does exist? Cataracts countless-Churchill River is one succession of cataracts; vast rivers; lakes unmapped, links and chains of lakes by which you can go from the Saskatchewan to the Arctic without once lifting your canoe; quaking muskegsareas of amber stagnant water full of what the Indians call mermaid's hair, lined by ridges of moss and sand overgrown with coarse goose grass and "the reed that grows like a tree" muskrat reed, a tasseled corn-like tufted growth sixteen feet high-areas of such mus keg mile upon mile. I traversed one such region above Cumberland Lake seventy miles wide by three hundred long where you could not find solid ground to camp the size of your foot. What did we do? That is where the uses of a really expert guide came in: moored our canoe among the willows, cut willows enough to keep feet from sinking, spread oil cloth and rugs over this, erected the tents over all, tying the guy ropes to the canoe thwarts and willows, as the ground would not hold the tent pegs.

It doesn't sound as if such regions would ever be over-run by settlementdoes it? Now look at your map, seventy miles north of Saskatchewan. From the north-west corner up by Klondike to the south-east corner down in Labrador is a distance of more than 3,000 miles. From the South to North is a distance of almost 2,000 miles. I once asked a guide with a truly city air-it might almost have been a Harvard air-if these distances were "as the crow flies." He

gave me a look that I would not like to have a guide give me too often-he might maroon a fool on one of those swamp areas.

"There ain't no distances as the crow flies in this country," he answered. "You got to travel 'cording as the waters collect or the ice goes out."

Well, here is your country, 3,000 by 2,000 miles, a great fur preserve. What exists in it? Very little wood, and that small. Undoubtedly some minerals. myself saw brought by an Indian from some unknown mine on Churchill River a piece of pure natural copper the size of a man's hand. What else exists? A very sparse population of Indians, whose census no man knows, for it has never been taken; but when the total Indian population of Canada is only 100,000, and you deduct from the total those on reserves and those on the Pacific Coast, it is a pretty safe guess to say there are not 20,000 Indians all told in the North fur country. I put this guess tentatively and should be glad of information from any one in a position to guess closer. I have asked the Hudson's Bay Company and I have asked Revillons how many white hunters and traders they think are in the fur country of the North. I have never met any one, who placed the number in the North at more than 2,000. Spread 2,000 white hunters with 10,000 Indians for of the total Indian population half are women and children-over an area the size of two-thirds of Europe -I ask you frankly, do you think they are

going to exterminate the game very fast? Remember the climate of the North takes care of her own. White men can stand only so many years of that lonely cold, and they have to come out; or they dwarf and degenerate.

Take a single section of this great Northern fur preserve-Labrador, which I visited some years ago. In area, Labrador is 530,000 square miles, two and a half times the size of France, twice the size of Germany, twice the size of Austria-Hungary. Statistical books set the population down at 4,000; but the Moravian missionaries there told me that including the Eskimo who come down the coast in summer and the fisherman who come up the coast in summer the total population was probably 17,000. Now Labrador is one of the finest game preserves in the world. On its rocky hills and watery upper barrens where settlement can never come are to be found silver fox-the finest in the world, so fine that the Revillons have established a fur trading post for silver fox on one of the islands-cross fox almost as fine as silver, black and red fox, the best otter in the world, the finest marten in America, bear of every variety, very fine Norway lynx, fine ermine, rabbit or hare galore, very fine wolverine, fisher, muskrat, coarse harp seal, wolf, cariboo, beaver, a few mink. Is it common sense to think the population of a few thousands can hunt out a fur empire here the size of two Germanies?

(Concluded in May number.)

HESE few lines in the President's message inspired this article. Mr. Taft is conservative. When he uses such words as "frightful" and "a very serious abuse" you may depend upon it that there is something wrong somewhere. And so the writer investigated, and the result is the startling discovery that several thousands of American men, women, and children are exposed to a loathsome disease-a dis

ease so repulsive that even experienced physicians turn sick while examining the unhappy creatures who are afflicted with it, and dread the duty that calls them to attend such cases. Leprosy itself is no more horrible than than phosphorus necrosis, popularly known as "phossy jaw."

In all American match factories the head of the ordinary parlor match is made by dipping the end of the wooden splint into a paste containing white phos

phorus, a most deadly poison. The fumes and particles of phosphorus attack the bones of the workers, but more especially their teeth. If the factory worker happens to have a decayed tooth, the poison enters the cavity, setting up an inflammation which, if not quickly arrested, extends along the jaw, killing the teeth and bones. The gums become swollen and purple, the teeth loosen and drop out, and the jaw-bones slowly decompose and pass away, the horrible product sometimes breaking through the neck in the form of an abscess, or if not almost continually cared for, finding its way to the stomach. Here is the brief history of one case among hundreds:

Nine years ago, at twenty-one years of age, Mary Wilson, tall, strong and full of the joy of life, married Henry Welsh. She had worked for several years as a "packer" in the match factory, and continued to work there after her marriage. But two months later she commenced to have trouble with her teeth. Dr. Afirst treated her, beginning with the first operation November 15th, 1901. He performed a second operation August 11th, 1903, removing several large splinters of bone from her jaw She grew no better, and through Dentist Bshe secured daily treatments at her home.

to

Finally, as the trouble continued, she went Doctors C and Dfor further medical aid, and is receiving medical attention from them at the present time. Three years ago an abscess opened through the right side of her jaw, and one year ago another opened on the left. Both require constant bandaging. When seen recently she was scarcely able to open her lips enough to speak and could not separate her upper from her six remaining lower teeth. All of her lower teeth except

out, and several inches of the jaw-bone is bare, and in indescribably horrible condition.

The physicians, in an effort to preserve the contour of her face and to avoid leaving unsightly scars, attempted to operate on the inside. In this case the dead bone does not form a sequestrum or separated portion which might easily be removed from the living bone beneath. It simply continues to die and to dispose of itself in the most nauseating and dangerous manner, poisoning the entire system.

The poison first manifested itself eight years ago, shortly after Mary Wilson's marriage. She has a boy six years old, a little girl of four, and a baby but two years old. She says that the two older children are well and strong, but that "the baby seems to have trouble in its blood."

"The doctors say perhaps they could cure me," she says, "by cutting out my

jaw, but I am young yet, and how would it. look? I'd rather be dead, I think!"

The suppurating bone is more horrible than anything that can be imagined. Anyone who has once witnessed the condition of such a sufferer can readily understand why dentists and physicians alike shun patients who are afflicted with "phossy jaw."

Now the case of Mary Wilson is not extraordinary. It is typical of many. There is an old woman in Ohio-a former matchmaker-who, as a result of phosphorus poisoning, for twenty years has had no lower jaw, but masticates her food by pressing it against her upper jaw with her thumb. Then there is George K of Portland, Maine, who also had his entire lower jaw removed and for twenty-two years ate no solid food; and William J of Milwaukee, J— who lived in abject misery with necrosis of the bones of the ear.

A well-known case was that of Emil H-, who underwent treatment in Chicago in 1895 for necrosis of the jaw. According to the hospital records, when forty-six years old, and married, he was first admitted to the hospital on June 9th, 1896, and remained ten days. The following appears in the hospital record: "Phosphorus necrosis. Dr. B of of Chicago removed both upper and lower maxillae." With both upper and lower jaws entirely removed, and with the poison still continuing its deadly work, this man lived month after month, suffering untold agonies, and taking nourishment through a tube.

Dozens of cases could be quoted of strong vigorous young men and women who have gone to work in our match factories, and in a few years have become terribly disfigured, with teeth gone, and with necrosed bone exposed. When a man has his lower jaw removed he immediately grows a beard, a refuge denied to the women sufferers.

When a

Now, incredible though it may sound, it is an absolutely established fact that this human misery, this blasting of the lives of men, women, and children, is absolutely unnecessary, and that a harmless substitute for the white phosphorus exists and has been successfully used in this and other countries. In other words, our match manufacturers permit their

workpeople to run the risk of this peril by unnecessarily continuing the use of poisonous phosphorus, because the substitute costs a fraction more!

In order to understand the full meaning of the present situation we must review briefly the match industry as a whole. Know, then, that these insignificant little trifles of wood, paper, or wax, topped with latent flame, wherewith we kindle fires and light the soothing pipe or cigar, represent an industry involving an investment in Europe and America of hundreds of millions of dollars. The match does its work, and is cast contemptuously aside, yet it is an evolution representative of much human patience, ingenuity and skill,-one of the best gifts sought out and elaborated by genius for the benefaction of the human race.

In this country alone the largest producer cuts one hundred million feet of timber every year to be converted into match sticks. Every minute of the twenty-four hours throughout the day three million matches are struck. Fifteen hundred billion is the number for an entire year. The importance of the industry is only recognized when the average smoker tries to contemplate his predicament if he had to go back to the time when he had to coax a spark from a tinder box.

In the years succeeding the discovery of the phosphorus match the industry grew prodigiously. In Germany first, then in France, Belgium and England, and successively in all parts of Europe, factories were established, and as there was absolutely no control exercised over the manufacture, the most deplorable conditions prevailed. Matches were being made almost anywhere, in the workmen's cottages, in the homes, in cellars. Phosphorus was found in clothing, in the midst of food, within reach of children, and from this carelessness came fires and hundreds of deaths from poisoning. The workmen, recruited from anywhere, and uncared for, were crowded together in unventilated workrooms, where the atmosphere was stifling. In a brief period the hospital in Vienna had one hundred and twentysix sufferers from phosphorus necrosis, and the hospitals of Berlin and Nuremberg were also crowded with cases.