Sometimes the furs are delayed en route but this is due to the changed situation—disruption of transport services and other means of communication, restrictions laid down by the new authorities and other reasons brought about by the present hostilities. Consequently when the furs arrive in Shanghai their prices are higher—sometimes 30 or 40 per ¢ent—than they would have been in normal times. Wise customers, however, would ask for furs which were bought by the Shanghai merchants last year, or two years ago, and Which have remained unsold. Even so their price has risen a little for scarcity means increased cost.
Despite the increase in prices, however, people have been purchasing lurs in the city as in former and more prosperous years and the merchants here expect to do better business this year than at any other period, the reason being the vast in-Crease in the city's population. Rich refugees who have fled to Shanghai have not brought with them much in the way of winter clothes, they say, and in addition many foreigners, especially the Japanese,.are buying furs. Some of the big fur stores transact between $3,000 and $4,000 worth of business daily from a ready stock, of about $500,000 worth of tors.
In Shanghai there are numerous establishments dealing in furs—department stores, secondhand shops, and others—and in Honan Road may be seen the shops which deal ex-
most. expensive sable may be found. viusively in ce even the Between Hankow and Nanking Roads there are five fur shops and their guild is located in the Tien Fah Ziang Fur Store where former managers of fur establishments in war-torn Nantao have emigrated since the fighting in Shanghai.
"Ta Tao" Stati Closed
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.