The feather market collapses

1914 · regional

The war, changing fashion, the motor car and overproduction end it within months. By 1914 the fall in feather prices is the leading article in De Prince Albert Vriend. Families that had cleared their orchards for lucerne were left holding birds nobody wanted.

Sources

• Merino sheep and the ostrich feather boom in the Cape merinosa.co.za; southafrica.co.za (Oudtshoorn ostrich industry)

Told in

• mentioned Eighty-one thousand morgen