For those of us who interact with
the visiting public at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, one of the
Frequently Asked Questions is “how much
did a beaver hat cost back then?” The answers include “it’s complicated,”
or “it’s hard to tell” or “we don’t really know.” But I think the most common
answer is some version of “a lot.” So how much is “a lot”?
As I hope will come through in this
posting, the best answer I can come up with at this point is “it was a
considerable expense, something like a week’s wages for a working man, so it
was limited mainly to the middling and wealthy classes, and it was a sign of a
certain social status to be able to afford a beaver hat.” That said, anyone
attempting to answer the question can abandon all thought of common prices in the
modern equivalent of “thousands of dollars” that I have heard bandied about. There were probably some very expensive hats made for very wealthy customers who were into conspicuous consumption. But if what were commonly called "fine beaver hats" were only a luxury item for the super rich, logic suggests
that the fur trade as we know it would not have been sustained on such
a large scale over more than two centuries (c. 1625-1850). If you’re ready for
this, hold on to your, um . . . hat, and keep reading.
We have a pretty good idea of how much
a beaver pelt was worth at Fort Vancouver, either in currency or in
trade goods.
It is much harder to pin down the
price of beaver hats in the retail markets of Europe or the USA. In a very direct sense the retail
price of hats was not all that relevant for Hudson’s Bay Company’s bottom line.
The HBC, after all, did not make hats. What mattered most to HBC was the
wholesale price for animal pelts when they were auctioned in London or sold to
brokers, who were the buyers at the wholesale auctions.(1)
The fur brokers then sold to hat
makers, whose many skilled employees then engaged in something like 30
labor-intensive steps before the fine underlayer of beaver fur was made into
felt, which was made into hats. It is generally agreed that pure beaver fur
made the best hats, but many “beaver” hats contained only a certain percentage
of beaver fur, with muskrat, rabbit, and especially sheep wool making up the
rest. One popular (and cheaper) type of hat, called “plated” or “roram,” had a
wool felt body with beaver fur brushed onto the outer surface, for looks. And
beaver fur was not the only raw material that went into hats, which included
mercury used in the felting process, shellac or other stiffeners, cloth liners,
leather sweatbands, and silk ribbon or other external hatbands or edge binding.
Finally, markups from the wholesale price a merchant paid to the retail price
to the buyer of the finished hat, were probably something like fifty to a
hundred percent.
Still, the overall market for
beaver hats, levels of demand, and affordability relative to common levels of
income, are all part of the context for the fur trade, and the success of HBC’s business model centered on the fur trade. In the big picture the broad demand
for felt hats that grew in Europe from the early 1600s and fell off
dramatically when fashion changed to silk hats in the second third of the 1800s
marks the rise and decline of the fur trade as one of North America’s driving
economic forces.
With these complications in mind, here
are some tantalizing hints:
In the inventory of goods on hand
at Fort Vancouver on June 1, 1832, one of the items listed is “24 ladies fine
beaver hats” for which the Company paid 11 shillings each. The total cost
for 24 hats was thus £13.4s.0d. We know that HBC’s price markup for retail
sales was 100% for the general public and its own officers. At that rate, if an outsider showed up to buy a hat (as Narcissa Whitman might have in 1836), she would
have paid 22 shillings. The online inflation calculator I find most useful (measuringworth.com)
says that 22 shillings in 1832 would be roughly equal to £79.70 today, or about
$123.00 in today's dollars.(2) “A lot,” right? But not astronomically off the charts. But this was
for the women’s model. Apparently there were no men’s beaver hats in stock at
Fort Vancouver in 1832.
For another data point: detailed
research on the cost of living in London, England, in the 1770s includes a man’s “fine
beaver hat” for 21 shillings.(3) That is roughly equal to £106.00 today, or
$164.00 in today's dollars. This source says that the same 21 shillings in the 1770s would pay the
wages of a journeyman silversmith for one week, pay for 12 French lessons, or
buy a dozen bottles of Portuguese wine. A wig for a clerk in a public office or
a brass barometer cost 18 shillings. A pair of velvet knee breeches cost 30
shillings. A pair of men’s silk stockings retailed for 17 shillings 4 pence.
The weekly wage of an unskilled laborer was 9 shillings. In other words, a fine
beaver hat was probably out of the reach of the working classes. And while it
was not a trivial expense for a man about town, a pair of silk hose cost only a
bit less, a case of imported wine would cost just as much, a wig somewhat less,
and velvet breeches considerably more.
Another source, discussing Pennsylvania in the era of
the American Revolution, the late 1700s, notes that “old ladies, among Friends [Quakers] . . . wore large white
beaver hats, with scarcely the sign of a crown, and which was, indeed, confined
to the head by silk cords tied under the chin.
Eight dollars would buy such a hat, when beaver fur was more plentiful. They
lasted such ladies almost a whole life of wear.” Quakers, while solid citizens
(and wearers of beaver hats, as the image on the Quaker Oats box confirms),
were not known for ostentatious dressing.
As for men’s
hats, the same Annals of Pennsylvania
had this to say:
“ Until the period of the Revolution, every
person who wore a fur hat had it always of entire beaver. Every apprentice, at
receiving his "freedom", received a real beaver at a cost of six
dollars. Their every day hats were of wool, and called felts. What were called roram hats, being fur faced upon
wool felts, came into use directly after the peace, and excited much surprise
as to the invention. Gentlemen's hats, of entire beaver, universally cost eight
dollars.” (4)
The Measuring Worth online
inflation calculator suggests that eight dollars in 1785 (taken to be “directly
after the peace” of 1783), would be something like $185.00 today. And the six
dollars for an apprentice’s graduation gift, a “real beaver” perhaps not of
“entire beaver” but surely better than his everyday wool felt hat, would be
something like $140.00 today.
BUT WAIT,
THERE’S MORE!
Although
the Hudson’s Bay Company was much more concerned with the wholesale price of
raw furs, they did buy hats to stock their trading posts. I’ve already
mentioned woman’s fine beaver hats in 1832, when no men’s hats were included in
the inventory. Here is the way the supply of hats that arrived at Fort
Vancouver on the supply ship Cowlitz
in February1841 appears in Company records: (5)
This is the transcription, beginning
right after the 4 gross (576) “Brass Jew’s Harps,” with quotation marks and
“ditto” expanded:
Per
item cost Total
# Description shillings/pence £/s/d
20 Men’s
s[uper]fine Black Beaver Hats 19/0 19/0/0
40 Men’s
fine plated hats 9/0 18/0/0
30 Men’s
fine waterproof hats 12/6 18/15/0
120 Men’s
Com[mon] wool hats 2/9 16/10/0
110 Men’s
fine wool hats 4/6 24/15/0
30 Men’s
Spanish hats 19/7 29/7/6
20 Men’s
Spanish hats 13/1 13/1/8
30 Wom[en]s
Round Beaver hats 7/0 10/10/0
Followed by 40 doz[en] tinsel hat cords, 15 dozen oiled silk hat covers, and 2 dozen waxed silk hat covers. (Apparently then as now people with nice hats wanted to protect them from the rain.)
This is how these figures roughly translate into wholesale costs
and retail prices per hat in today’s
US dollars: (6)
Wholesale
cost Retail Price
Description (US dollars) (US dollars)
Men’s s[uper]fine Black Beaver Hats 101.00 202.00
Men’s fine plated hats 48.00 96.00
Men’s fine waterproof hats 66.10 132.20
Men’s Com[mon] wool hats 13.90 27.80
Men’s fine wool hats 23.50 47.00
Men’s Spanish hats 105.11 210.22
Men’s Spanish hats 69.30 138.60
Wom[en]s Round Beaver hats 37.30 74.6
There’s a lot to absorb here. One
take-away is a solid comparison of the prices of the various types and grades
of hats listed. Roughly speaking, a fine beaver hat cost twice as much as a plated hat of wool felt with beaver fur applied to the surface. A fine wool
felt hat cost half as much as a plated hat, and a common wool hat, in turn,
cost about half as much as a fine wool hat, and only a fraction of the price of
a fine beaver hat. There were 230 wool felt hats in this shipment, compared to
only 20 fine beaver models. That would seem to be appropriate for the market demand HBC might have expected in 1841, before the influx of wagon-borne American “emigrants”
began to arrive in large numbers, at a time when there were relatively few men in the entire
Columbia District/Oregon Country who might be looking to acquire a fine beaver
hat in any given year--or who could afford one.
For a few more comparisons, in the
same 1841 shipment the wholesale cost of a flintlock musket with 3 1/2-foot barrel,
HBC’s “common Indian gun,” was 22 shillings, more than a fine beaver hat at 19
shillings. A “dark blue cloth capot with hood” cost the company 21 shillings 6
pence. A 3 ½-point blanket cost the Company 9 shillings 3 pence, and a man’s
“flashy flowered silk vest” cost 9 shillings 4 pence, meaning that 2 such
blankets or vests were worth basically the same as a fine beaver hat. A “men’s fine
cloth jacket” cost 19 shillings 6 pence, slightly more than a fine beaver hat. A
pair of “men’s blucher shoes” was 8 shillings 6 pence wholesale. “Men’s grey
trousers” cost the Company 13 shillings 6 pence a pair. And so on. If you
needed a good hat, as every gentleman did, it was an expense roughly in line
with other clothing items (or bed covers) worthy of your status.
As for the “Spanish hats,” the best
of which cost more than a fine beaver hat, I speculate that they were wide-brimmed
hats of high quality materials and construction, favored by the californios and possibly destined for
the HBC’s “California Establishment” at Yerba Buena, the old name for what
became San Francisco. If so, they would probably have been traded for a
certain number of dried cowhides—but that’s material for a future posting.
(For a little more context: if you
search the Internet for “beaver hat prices” you will see that in today’s market a
dress fedora or cowboy hat claiming at least some beaver fur in the felt will
run you anywhere from around $300 to $800—not counting specialty hats made for
the reenactment crowd and those with an itch for a 100% pure beaver hat that
absolutely must be scratched.)
If anyone reading this has any
other information that might help us pin down the retail prices of beaver (and
other types of) hats “back in the day,” I would very much like to receive an
email note at tomholloway62(a)gmail.com
NOTES:
(1) An informative overview of the English fur market, hat
manufacturing processes, and wholesale marketing strategies is David Corner, “The Tyranny of Fashion: The Case
of the Felt-Hatting Trade in the Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Textile History, 22:2 (Autumn 1991). I thank
Dr. James Hanson of the Museum of the Fur Trade for pointing me to this source.
(2) "Fort Vancouver Depot Inventory, 1st June 1832," Hudson’s Bay Company Archives (HBCA), B/223/d/16-40 (microfilm in Fort Vancouver NHS research library). At the 1832 exchange rate between British and US currency, 22 shillings was equal to $5.34 at that point in time. Any calculation of currency inflation (loss of purchasing power) over long periods is only approximate. For one thing, the basket of goods used to measure purchasing power has changed dramatically from 1832 to today. As the economists at Measuring Worth point out HERE, "there is no single 'correct' measure of value over time, and economic historians use one or more different series depending on the context of the question." I use these numbers only as something better than the alternatives, which are a shrug of the shoulders, or a wild guess.
(3) Liza Picard, Dr.Johnson’s London (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), p. 296 in the
Appendix listing “cost of living, currency, and prices” during the active
professional life of one of the major literary figures of London in the
1760s-70s, Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1794), of whom James Boswell wrote the famous
biography, Life of Samuel Johnson.
(4) Watson, John F., Annals
of Pennsylvania, Vol 1 (1857)
The online version is unpaginated. These quotations are from
the following section, Ch. 15-18:
http://files.usgwarchives.net/pa/philadelphia/areahistory/watson0107.txt
http://files.usgwarchives.net/pa/philadelphia/areahistory/watson0107.txt
I am grateful to
Dr. James Hanson of the Museum of the Fur Trade for pointing me to this source.
(5) “Invoice of Goods Received at Fort Vancouver on
Barque Cowlitz, February 1841,” HBCA, B/223/d/139 (microfilm in Fort Vancouver NHS research library), I thank Theresa Langford, Curator, and Meagan Huff, Museum Technician/Librarian at Fort Vancouver NHS, for their assistance in providing access to this and other sources available at the site.
(6) The wholesale cost in 2011 dollars is derived by the conversion and inflation calculators at measuringworth.com. Of course such calculations over extended times are rough approximations, but they are better than mere guesses, as explained in THIS ESSAY on the Measuring Worth site or in the FAQ at the bottom of THIS PAGE. The retail price is
calculated on the cost+100% markup HBC charged to “Settlers and Missionaries”
as well as to the Company’s Commissioned Officers (Chief Factors and Chief
Traders) during the winter season. HBC employees of the “servant” category were
charged a 50% markup over the company’s wholesale cost. These pricing policies
are discussed in John Hussey, “Historic Structures Report” Vol. 1 (1972), p.
190-1, note 17, reproduced in Lester A. Ross, “Fort Vancouver, 1829-1860: A Historical Archaeological
Investigation of the Goods Imported and Manufactured by the Hudson’s Bay
Company,” (Typescript, Fort Vancouver NHS, 1976), Table 12, p. 150.
Hussey's work and other online sources on Fort Vancouver in the Hudson's Bay Co. era are discussed in THE POSTING which immediately precedes the one you are now reading on historic beaver hat prices.
Hussey's work and other online sources on Fort Vancouver in the Hudson's Bay Co. era are discussed in THE POSTING which immediately precedes the one you are now reading on historic beaver hat prices.
