One fair June morning in 1668, more than half a century after the mutinous crew of the Discovery had pushed Hendrik Hudson into an open boat in Hudson Bay and set him adrift to die, the 50-ton ketch Nonsuch with a company of 42 hoisted anchor in Gravesend, England and sailed away for Hudson Bay to open up the fur trade. On promise of receiving "two elks and two black beavers." King Charles II gave the "Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay" a charter two years later for the exclusive trade of all territories watered by streams flowing into Hudson Bay. No gunshot had ever sounded there and caribou and grizzlies roamed the bleak and ragged wastes undisturbed, when Prince Rupert's little company settled down to business, taking as their motto "Pro Pelle Cutem" (Skin for Skin).
Hugely successful almost from the start, the hardbitten skin traders fought famine and cold, "the feare in the buttocks, . . . the belly empty, the weariness in the bones. . . ." After 14 years the little company startled the world by declaring a 50% dividend. The next year it paid 25%. Then it split its shares three for one and paid 25% on each of the new shares. By 1869 Hudson's Bay Co. felt secure enough to turn over to the Dominion of Canada the title to most of its original grant for £300,000, keeping only 7,000,000 acres in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba and land around its trading posts. From that time until just before the World War, little was done to develop the company.
Last week the eyes of all Canada were turned on Hudson's Bay Co. as a Parliamentary Committee on Mass Buying settled down in Ottawa to investigate the business of the oldest company in North America. Untainted by scandal, the probe was part of Parliament's program for determining the extent and causes of retail price spreads throughout the Dominion. Hudson's Bay Co. was only one of several on the examination table, but because it today controls many of the largest department stores in Canada, it. was easily the most important. At that, the probe did not reveal much about the company which Canadians did not already know. Confining itself chiefly to a de scription of how the company operates, it did reveal that dividends of from 20% to 50% were paid between 1910 and 1930. In 1930-32 Hudson's Bay Co. lost money, but last year, on a total Canadian invest ment of $27,337,000, it showed a profit of $403,000.
Hudson's Bay Co. by no means gave up fur trading when it entered the depart ment store field. In 1931-32 its fur catch was almost 4,500,000 pelts worth $10,000,000. It maintains 224 fur trading posts, has lately been developing silver fox farms, owns a large block of stock in the Montreal trading subsidiary of Revillon, Inc., famed Paris and Manhattan furrier.
On big department stores in a dozen cities in Western Canada glitters the name HUDSON'S BAY CO. The Winnipeg store did a $7,600,000 business last year; the Vancouver unit, $6,000,000; the Calgary store, $2,600,000; stores in Victoria, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Kamloops, Nelson, Vernon and Yorkton, another $5,800,000.