Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 January 1901 — Hudson Bay Fur Company. [ARTICLE]

Hudson Bay Fur Company.

Years ago the fur trade ceased to be managed from London, and, although the governor of the company is the titular and official head, a new rule provided that there should be a resident chief commissioner, with headquarters at Winnipeg. The successor to the post held for nearly forty years by Sir George Simpson, the late autocrat of the fur trade, is Clarence Campbell Chipman, kfiown not to Englishmen at home, perhaps, but to every factor, clerk, hunter, trapper, engage, Indian and half-breed In the Great Lone land as the “chief,” or the “big white boss,” of the fur trade. As in the days of Sir George, directors in England may come and go, convening by candle light, acording to immemorial usage, in the musty broadroom at Hudson’s Bay bouse, but the “chief” remains.

It is on the co-operative and profitsharing plan that the fur trade of the company is managed nowadays. Every employe, from clerk to chief factor, is richer for an abundance of pelts and high prices, but he does not share the profits of the shop-keeping and landselling, which is a distinct branch of the business and annually growing in extent. This is not to be wondered at, considering that wheq the company ceded its lands to the crown it still retained acres which at a rough valuation to-day are yet worth, after all their sales, between £20,000,000 and £30,000,000. This is a grievance with the clerks and factors, as you will discover when you come to talk “musquash” (1. e., “shop”) at any of the or factories in the far north—a grievance and also a matter of contempt and an object for their satire. Land-selling forsooth! As If there were any Intrinsic value In barren acres to a Hudson’s Bay man!— Comb ill Magazine.