"Yes," interrupted Connie, "but they are the victims of the bootleggers and the whiskey runners! How about the free trader that won't handle liquor?"
"There ain't no such a free trader!" exclaimed Hansen, angrily. "They're a pack of lying, thievin'——"
"There, there, Berl, lad!" rumbled McTavish, checking the irate Dane, who had fairly launched upon his favourite theme. "Ye're right, in the main—but the lad's question was a fair one an' deserves a fair answer. I'm an older man, an' I've be'n thirty years in the service of the Company. Let me talk a bit, for there are a few traders that for aught I know are honest men an' no rum peddlers. But, there's reasons why they don't last long." The old Scotchman paused, whittled deliberately at his plug tobacco, and filled his pipe. "It's this way," he began. "We'll suppose this trader over on the Coppermine is a legitimate trader. We will handle his case fairly, an' to do that we must consider first the Hudson's Bay Company. For two hundred an' fifty years we have been traders of the North—we know the needs of the North—an' we supply them. The Indian's interests are our interests, and we trade nothing but the best goods. For two centuries an' a half we have studied the North and we have dealt fairly. And may I say here," with a glance toward Hansen, "that there are several other companies with sound financial backing and established posts that have profited by our experience and also supply only the best of goods, and deal fairly. With them we have no quarrel—honest competition, of course, we have—but no quarrel. Comes now the free trader. He is a man of small capital. His goods are cheap, they are of inferior quality. He cannot give 'debt,' as the credit of the North is called. He cannot carry a large number of Indians for six months or a year as we do. If he attempts it, his creditors press him and he goes to the wall—or the Indians find out before time for payment comes that the goods are inferior, and they repudiate their debt. It is bad all around—bad for the Indians, bad for the free traders, and bad for us——"
"I should think it would be good for you," interrupted Connie.
The factor shook his head: "I told you the Indians' interests are our interests. I will show you. Take it at this very post. We will suppose that the beaver are becoming scarce around here; what do we do? We say to the Indians, 'Do not kill any beaver this year and next year.' And they obey us—why? Because we will not buy any beaver here during that time. They will not kill what they cannot sell. Then, when the beavers have become numerous again, we resume trade in them. Were it not for this policy, many fur-bearing animals that once were numerous would now be extinct.
"But—suppose there are free traders in the country—we will pay nothing for beavers, so they begin to buy them cheap—they can name their own price, and the Indians will keep on killing them. The Indian says: 'It is better that I should sell this beaver now at six skins than that my neighbour should sell him in two years at twelve skins.' Then, soon, there are no more beavers left in that part of the country. Another thing, in the fur posts our word is law. We tell the Indians when they can begin to take fur, and when they must stop. The result is we handle only clean, prime pelts with the flesh side white as paper. With the free trader a pelt is a pelt, prime or unprime, it makes no difference. So the killing goes merrily on where the free traders are—and soon all the fur-bearing animals are exterminated from that section. What does the free trader care? He loads his fly-by-night outfit into canoes or a York boat, and passes on to lay waste another section, leaving the poor Indians to face the rigours of the coming winter with ruined credit, cheap, inadequate clothing, cheap food, and worthless trinkets, and their hunting grounds barren of game."
"But," objected Connie, "suppose a free trader dealt in goods as good as yours——"
McTavish laughed. "I have yet to see that trader in thirty years' experience. Admit that his goods did measure up to our standard. What would he have to charge for them? We buy in vast quantities—in some cases we take the entire output of factories, and we have an established system of transportation to get it into the wilds. No free trader can compete with us—cost plus freight would ruin him, especially as he must allow the Indians a debt."
"How much debt do they get?"
"That depends upon several things. First of all upon the Indian—his reputation for honesty, and his reputation as a hunter. It also depends upon the size of his family, the distance of his hunting ground from the post, and his general prospects for the season. It varies from one hundred to five or six hundred, and in exceptional cases even to a thousand skins."