ARTISAN NY WOOL HAT FULL
To play that role, they needed proper attire, and while visiting Fort Vancouver they acquired clothing and supplies paid for by the HBC at full retail, quoted in dollars. They traveled openly, but in the guise of civilian gentlemen seeking adventure. Shortly after this inventory, in 1845-1846, two British Army lieutenants, Mervin Vavasour and Henry Warre, conducted a reconnaissance of the Columbia District to assess military needs in the event that boundary negotiations between the United States and Great Britain broke down. For a senior clerk making £150 per year, equal to $666.00 at the time, or $12.81 per week, a superfine beaver hat cost the equivalent of six days' salary. The retail price of a superfine beaver hat, $8.67, was equal to six weeks' salary for a laborer. At the exchange rate the Company used (4s/6d = 54 pence = $1.00, or £1 = $4.44), that was equal to $75.56 per year, or $1.45 per week. In this period, the annual salary of a rank-and-file HBC laborer was £17. And felt hats made of sheep's wool cost much less. They were less than half the cost of the "superfine" model. The "plated beaver" hats used less expensive material for the hat body, with beaver fur glued onto the surface. But a pair of fancy cashmere pants cost even more, and three pair of regular trousers, or four cotton shirts, would cost more than the best beaver hat. Hudson's Bay Company, remaining on hand at Fort Vancouver Depot, Spring 1844," Hudson's Bay Company Archives, B.223/d/155)Ī "superfine beaver hat" was an expensive item, costing not much less than a flintlock gun. (Source: "Inventory of Sundry Goods, property of the Hon. This table shows the retail price of selected items in stock in spring 1844, ranked by value: Each spring, the HBC inventoried supplies on hand at Fort Vancouver, recording the wholesale price on which retail prices were based. The Hudson's Bay Company did not make hats, but it did sell them, along with other items that provide points of comparison. One source of information on the price of a beaver hat is closer to home. Wright, Comparative Wages, Prices, and Cost of Living, Boston: Wright and Potter, 1889, p. Over the same period, the daily wage for a common laborer was about $1.00 per day, and the daily wage of a semi-skilled tradesman such as a blacksmith or carpenter ranged from $1.25 to $1.75 per day. The high-end price for a pair of men's shoes was more consistent at about $2.00 over the 1825-1846 period, roughly half the price of a fine hat. Those figures are generally in line with the prices for fine beaver hats in the print ads above. There are many hints, however, to support the "better answer" above.Ī detailed study of daily life in London, England, in the 1770s lists these typical prices:
Even when newspaper advertising became more common in the 1800s, most print ads did not include prices. Retail prices and incomes in the remote past are notoriously difficult to come by, because no centralized or standardized records were kept.
One way to understand the cost of a beaver hat is to compare known prices to the cost of other typical items of consumption. How do we know this? Here's some historical evidence. All men wore a hat as part of their outdoor attire, and most men in white-collar professions, including clerks, merchants, property owners, those in the educational, technical, medical, legal, and political professions, could probably afford a beaver hat." But if what was commonly called a "fine beaver hat" had been 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, first in Northern Europe, and then in North America, over some two and a half centuries (from about 1600 to 1850).Ī better answer is something like this: "A fine beaver hat was a considerable expense, and it was a sign of a certain social status to wear one, so it was limited mainly to gentlemen of the middling and wealthy classes. Some very expensive hats may have been made for very wealthy customers who were into conspicuous consumption. One of the most frequently asked questions we receive at Fort Vancouver 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." The most common answer is probably some version of "a lot." So, how much was "a lot"? By Tom Holloway, Volunteer-in-Parks, Fort Vancouver National Historic Site
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