Existing comment:
Ivory
Expensive Luxury
Americans have desired elephant ivory since the colonial era.
For thousands of years, people all over the world valued ivory objects made from elephant tusks. Americans were no exception. But in the new United States, only the wealthy few could afford products made of ivory. Hunting elephants, shipping tusks from Africa and Asia, and turning tusks into finished goods in Europe and the United States was an expensive enterprise. Elephants were killed to meet the demand for the tusks in this period, but in low enough numbers to avoid the threat of extinction. |