Fouke Fur Company

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Fouke Fur Company

logo
legal form Corporation
founding around 1915
resolution 1983
Seat St. Louis , Missouri, USA
Greenville (South Carolina) , USA
Branch Fur dressing , fur finishing , tobacco shop

The Fouke Fur Company was, beginning around 1915 to 1962, the world's most important finishing and trading company for fur seals , known in trade as Sealskin or Sealfelle. All seal skins for America were traded and refined on behalf of the government via Fouke. For forty years, the Fouke Fur Company represented not only the United States, but at least temporarily also all other sealskin producing countries, with the exception of the Soviet Union. The company's headquarters were initially in St. Louis in the US state of Missouri, and since 1963 Greenville in North Carolina .

History of the seal skin

Salted raw sealskins

For the modern fur processing, the seal skins are usually freed from the awns, so that the soft under hair comes to light. Despite this procedure, Sealskin is one of the toughest skins with around 12,000 hairs per cm². After plucking out the hard upper hair, the soft copper-colored undercoat remains. In the beginning the fur was only detached, a type of fur finishing that has been known in China for a long time. In 1796 the Englishman Thomas Chapmann also managed to do this, which suddenly drove the price of seal skins up. The fur is sold as sealskin or furseal , but the relatively heavy fur already played no role in Europe in the last decades before the extensive EU import bans on seal skins in 1983 and 2009.

A sealjacket is considered to be the first outwardly worked fur of the modern age, it was made in London in 1842. Sealskin was for a long time the most important fur commodity in the seal family .

The home of the fur seal is the northern part of the Pacific Ocean. After ruthless exploitation immediately after the discovery of the stocks (estimated 2 to 4 million) and despite the first protective measures, the number of seals living on the Pribilof Islands had decreased to around 200,000 animals in 1910. The earliest protective measures were taken in 1835 to save the species from total extinction. In 1867, the United States took over the Alaska fur trade and exported sealskins to London, including those from the Russian Commanders' Islands . From 1870, the US no longer left the hunt to individual companies; instead, the sole exploitation of the Alaskan herd was entrusted to the Alaska Commercial Company for 20 years . In 1890 the contract with the now reorganized Northern Commercial Company was extended with even stricter provisions. After the herds had reached a number of one and a half million animals on the Pribilof Islands alone, the catch of 60,000 to 70,000 "bachelors" (three to four years old) was allowed annually.

Black coloring was first achieved in Paris in 1830, and further developed in Germany in 1870, it was still very cumbersome and very time-consuming with more than 20 coats of the top color. The development of aniline dyes then completely replaced the old process. Plucked untreated fur seal skins have very curly hair tips. In the correct coloring process, the hair is tightened so that these curls are removed. The silky sheen is also only created during dyeing; in its natural state, the fur looks quite dull.

Most of the sealskins came onto the market through auctions that were held annually in the USA and Canada. The auction was carried out on behalf of the United States, Japan, the South African Union (now the Republic of South Africa) and Uruguay. The less high-quality copper seals offered by the USSR were refined in the country and traded via Leningrad and London.

The number of fur seals on the fur seal has fallen dramatically around the world thanks to protective regulations and the seal campaigns. Until 1955, about 65,000 males were furred annually from the northern fur seal, then about 48,000 males, and then an additional 25,000 females from 1965–1968. Then only 25,000 males. After the Fouke company closed in 1983 and the auctions stopped, practically no skins were marketed except for local consumption. The latest figures are not taken into account, and the fur has no longer been of any significance for the European market. Since 2010, all seal skins within the European Union have been subject to an extensive trade ban.

Company history

Fouke Fur Company, share certificate for 100 shares

  • Lakodafell
    (sheared, dyed)

  • Sealskin
    (plucked, dyed black)

Until the Seal Convention was concluded in 1911, seal skins were mainly refined at the main hub in London. Since the USA was not only the largest exporter of seal skins, but also the largest producer and buyer of Sealskin clothing, the skins had been shipped twice across the Atlantic.

Colonel Philip Fouke (born July 20, 1872 in New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana, USA; † March 23, 1951 in Riverside County, California, USA), owner of a fur dye factory in St. Louis, USA, was previously president of the fur finishing company Funsten Bros. & Co , which also prepared seal skins. In 1913, with the assistance of Commerce Secretary William Redfield, he attempted to move the seal dyeing factory entirely to the United States. He tried to persuade the owner of the prestigious English dye works Georg Rice in London to set up a branch in America. When he did not succeed, after long negotiations and overcoming many difficulties he was able to take over two specialists from the Rice company. Rice tried unsuccessfully to take action against the competition in court in the USA. He assumed that the former employees had betrayed his closely guarded dye recipes to the new employer.

In 1915, sealskin that had been dressed and dyed black for the first time in the country by the US government was auctioned by the Fouke Fur Company, after Gibbins & Lohn Dressing & Dying Co. Inc. had previously been founded. This happened at a favorable point in time, as the outbreak of World War I interrupted the transport of goods to England and the annual harvest of two years was stored in salt. At the same time, the 30 percent tax levied for re-importing the refined skins was no longer applicable. In 1921 the Fouke Fur Company took over the newly founded company.

In a contract with Fouke & Co, St. Louis, the US government agreed to pay the government a certain amount for each furseal shot, and half of the proceeds for the skins from the Pribilof Islands, giving three years' notice after deduction of costs. Until before the Second World War , England and Japan also received 15% of the net proceeds of all skins obtained from the Pribilofs. The company had sole fishing rights for this. At least before 1952, every fifth barrel with seal skins on the Pribilof was labeled “Canada”, since according to a contract from 1942 the Dominion Canada was entitled to 20 percent of the skins obtained on the islands.

Fouke developed into a sealskin specialist with finishing qualities not achieved elsewhere. While Fouke initially only dyed black, the name Transveldt was introduced after 1920 for the reddish-brown colored skins of the South African capsules , and safari for the similarly colored skins from the Pribilof Islands and other origins . There were also the successful browns Kitovi (old: Bois de Campêche - dark, blue-black) and Matara (warm dark brown). In 1956, female animals were released for capture for the first time. They were surprised to find that these furs behaved completely differently when plucking than the male animals, with large amounts of the undercoat being lost. The seal hair has a peculiarity, awn and wool hair come from the same skin pore, which makes it more difficult to remove the awn. Fouke solved the problem by not plucking these skins, but shaving the hair to a length of two millimeters. They came on the market in 1964 as a completely new product under the name Lakoda (from Aleut "Lakudaq", female fur seal). The deep-shorn skins have a suede-like, hardly fur-like look. New tanning methods made the leather soft and much lighter. Natural, i.e. unplucked and undyed skins were also used.

In 1962 the company decided to move operations from New Orleans to Greenville, South Carolina. According to an employee of the Interior Ministry, this was done without consulting the government, even though Fouke generated around half of his sales from government contracts. On the grounds of this breach of trust and the negative consequences for the city, for the employees and their families as well as previous disagreements, the government terminated the forty-year agreement on December 31, 1962. The company was now in Greenville, White Horse Road.

In an official review it was found that the license had rightly been withdrawn, and that they had long had unsatisfactory experience with Fouke's business methods. In addition to other points, three examples were highlighted: On the one hand, it shows the way he dealt with his employees - not only when moving out of New Orleans - but also earlier in the disputes with the union. In addition, the company would have played a major role in the poor treatment of the residents of the Pribiloff Islands. Your attitude towards these citizens of the United States would be “caring” in the most positive case, or “oppressive” in the worst case. For example, the thirty college students who work there every year were forbidden by Fouke to fraternize with the Aleutians or to mix socially. However, the control of a “fair” remuneration of the Aleutians was subject to the Ministry of the Interior, which had set the wage per animal killed at one dollar. However, the wages were only paid in kind. Since the seal hunt was the only source of income for the Aleutians, it was practically impossible for them to leave the islands.

Earlier company inspections had also shown that Fouke had shown little willingness to treat black employees equally. The new contract was signed after a tender, which the London-based fur finishing company CW Martin & Sons, Ltd. involved, concluded with Supara Inc. , Chicago.

President and co-partner G. Donald Gibbins died on December 28, 1955. He owned one-third of the outstanding shares of Fouke Fur Company and served on the Board of Directors from 1922 until his death in 1955.

In 1974 the company received the so-called "E" certificate from the American government, which is awarded for "exceptional performance in the field of export". The award came because the company was able to continuously increase the export share of the sale of the seal skins it has finished until it finally reached 93 percent of total production, "a record that is unparalleled in America". In the same year there was a US ban on Cape Seal skins from South Africa, against which Fouke appealed. The official justification was the method of killing the animals. However, many experts believed that other interests or interest groups influenced the decision. The ban was lifted around the end of 1975.

In 1983 the Fouke Fur Company ceased operations.

  • Sealskin Cape and Muff (ca.1890, Metropolitan Museum of Art )

  • Salting the raw hides

  • Raw sealskins in barrels for the Fouke Fur Company

  • Fouke showroom with buyers and auction assistants
    (St. Louis, 1946)

  • Buyers in the showroom of the Fouke auction

  • Lakoda-Seal-Coat, colored (ca.1970)

Web links

Commons : Fouke Fur Company  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Under Eight Monarchs - 1823-1953 . CW Martin & Sons, Ltd., London 1953, (English).
  2. ^ A b Paul Larisch , Josef Schmid, Paris: Das Kürschner-Handwerk, Part III , Verlag Paul Larisch and Josef Schmid, Paris 1903, pp. 63–67.
  3. ↑ Max Bachrach: Fur. A Practical Treatise. Prentice-Hall, Inc., New York, 1936. P. 520 (English).
  4. ↑ a b c d W. Born: The seal catch on the islands . In: Ciba Rundschau Alaskische Sealskins , issue 102, Basel, April 1952, p. 3746.
  5. ↑ Without a statement by the author: Seal skins, the largest of all fur skins. In: “Die Pelzkonfektion”, Vol. 2, No. 2, February 1926, Leipzig, p. 62.
  6. ^ Fa. Denhardt & Schütze, Hamburg: Seal skins in the fur trade , 12 pages, undated (approx. 1970).
  7. ↑ Christian Franke / Johanna Kroll: Jury Fränkel ’s Rauchwaren-Handbuch 1988/89 . 10th revised and supplemented new edition. Rifra-Verlag, Murrhardt 1988, p. 320-325 .
  8. ↑ www.findagrave.com: Philip Bond Fouke .
  9. ↑ George Rogers: An Economic Analysis of the Pribilof Islands 1870-1946 . March 1976 (English). Retrieved January 19, 2017.
  10. ^ Hector Chevigny: Encyclopedia Arctica 12: Alaska, Geography and General , 1947-1951, p. 115 (English). Retrieved January 19, 2017.
  11. ↑ a b Without naming the author: The history of the Alaska seal . In: Pelz International No. 1, January 1969, Rhenania Verlag Koblenz, pp. 65-67.
  12. ↑ Alexander Tuma: Pelzlexikon. XXI. Volume of fur and tobacco products , keyword Sealkontrakt , Verlag Alexander Tuma, Vienna, 1951.
  13. ↑ Abraham Gottlieb: Fur Truth. Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York, London 1927, pp. 46-47 (English).
  14. ↑ United States Department of Interior, News Release, Office of Secretary: Contract for processing Alaska Sealskins to be Canceled . November 30, 1961.
  15. ↑ Ready Reference Fur Industry Telephone Directory . Volume 39, New York, NY, May 1963, p. 235 (English).
  16. ↑ Stetson Kennedy (eds.): Jim Crow Guide to the USA: The Laws, Customs and Etiquette Governing the Conduct of Nonwhites and Other Minorities as Second-Class Citizens . University of Alabama Press, 2011, p. 23. First published by Lawrence & Wishart 1959, ISBN 978-0-8173-8564-4 (electronic). Retrieved January 16, 2017.
  17. ↑ United States. General Accounting Office: Decisions of the Comptroller General of the United States , Volume 43 , US Government Printing Office, 1965, p. 364. Retrieved January 15, 2018.
  18. ^ US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri: Fouke Fur Company v. Bookwalter, 261 F. Supp. 367 (ED Mo. 1966) . , December 2, 1966 (English). Retrieved January 19, 2017.
  19. ↑ Without an author's name: The Fouke Company received an award . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 252, September 20, 1974, p. 11.
  20. ↑ Without indication of the author: Fouke application to the US Department of Interior . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 302, September 12, 1975, p. 13.
  21. ↑ Unspecified by the author: Kapseals for Fouke . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 318, January 9, 1976, p. 18.