Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/851

 Making Money Out of Rabbits

��How a young woman taught herself ning and engaged in a business that

A YOUNG woman in Los Angeles, Mrs. Carl Sherman, has taught herself fur-raising and tanning and maintains a "rabbitry" of three or four hundred choice specimens. She is the founder and instructor of the "Southern California Coney Fur Club," and has a large established trade both in skins and garments of fur.

Instructions in rabbit- raising and tanning were obtained from the Government. To learn garment-making she sent to Chicago for the cheapest set of furs of fashionable cut that could be had. These she carefully ripped up, studying the seaming and finish, and afterwards using the pieces for patterns. Now she makes fur sets — muff and cape — that sell for forty or more dollars.

In her own back-yard, on a fifty-foot lot, are pens of up-to-date construction full of aristocrats in the coney-world —

���After being tanned the skins are softened by scraping and rubbing

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��fur-raising and tan- anyone can learn

Himalayas, English Snow Shoes, Imperial Blues. Flemish Blacks, French Silver, little Jap- anese and other varieties. And in her cottage are chests full of preserved skins that sell for eight dollars each unmade, while her transactions ill made skins amount to several hundred dollars a month. Yet a child could learn the trade, she declares. The formula is simply five gallons of water, four pounds of common salt, and two ounces of sulphuric acid, made into a solu- tion, in which the skins are soaked from six to twenty days according to their weight; they are then dried in the shade, pulled and stretched by hand, and rubbed over the edge of a hardwood board until pli- able. Finally they arc immersed in gaso- line, rubbed over while wet with corn- starch or fuller's earth, dried in the sun, and brushed.

Having mastered the business in its details, Mrs. Sherman last October formed a club of her neighbors, which in December had thirty-two members, all rais- ing their own rabbits, tanning their own skins and making fash- ionable fur pieces for the trade. The club prepares an exhibit of fur garments for the annual show of the California Rabbit As- sociation. This exhibit includes a wide variety of fur pieces, such as hats, muffs, capes, scarfs, slip- pers and bags — all of fashionable cut and beautiful shades and markings. The club never lacks a market for its wares; as a mat- ter of fact, the members find the demand exceeding the supply.

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