ORAL ARGUIMENT OF SIR CHARLES RUSSELL, Q. C. M. P. 31 



straight iu the face, let us hear as little as possible in the future in this 

 argument about these high j^hilanthropic aims, this benelit to mankind, 

 and all the rest of it. 



Mr. Justice Harlan. — Will you explain how the exaction of the 

 United States, to which you have referred, increases the price in the 

 Loudon market of seal-skins taken in the North Pacific by pelagic 

 sealers who do not have to pay this exaction? 



Sir Charles Russell. — Of course it is that very consideration 

 which gives to the i)elagic sealer in the North Pacific his margin of 

 profit. 



Mr. Justice Harlan. — 1 can understand how those who take them 

 on the islands and have to pay those exactions must ask. a certain ])rice 

 in London in order that they may get sufficient profits; but if the 

 jtelagic sealers are not subject to those exactions, can they not under- 

 sell those Avho carry skins from the Pribilof Islands to the London 

 market? 



Sir Charles Kussell. — My answer is very brief. The price of the 

 article in the ultimate market to which it finds its way, although it may 

 be iu some stages influenced by the cost of production, is ultimately and 

 mainly influenced only by the question of supply and demand; and 

 therefore the pelagic sealer, although of course he could afford to sell 

 the skin at a lower price, will not sell it at a lower price than that 

 which the market commands. The diflerence between the position of 

 the pelagic sealer who is outside the area of United States legislation 

 and the man who is within it, is that the one man has to pay this tax 



and the other hf^s not. That is the difference. 

 757 The President. — Would you go so far as to say that pelagic 



sealing would be utterly inipossible if there were not this tax to 

 pay to the United States — that the exjiense, for instance of pelagic 

 sealing Mould be too great for the skins caught at sea by pelagic seal- 

 ing to fetch a marketable price? 



Sir Charles Kussell. — I should not like to commit myself to that 

 statement, sir, without some consideration. I should not like to say that 

 pelagic sealing would entirely cease ; but certainly it would not offer the 

 inducements which the existing state of things does ofi'er to pelagic 

 sealing, for the obvious reasons that my learned friends have enlarged 

 upon. They have established — I think satisfactorily established — tliat 

 if there is no tax, the man who clubs the seal upon the island can bring 

 the skin of that clubbed seal to the market upon cheaper terms and 

 with less expenditure of labour than the man who has to pursue it iu the 

 open ocean; but 1 should not like to go the length of asserting that it 

 would necessarily put an end to it entirely. Certainly it would to a 

 very large extent. 



Senator MoRCfAN. — Sir Charles, it is proper, 1 think to remark in 

 regard to the ]!olicy of the United States (iovernraent iu taxing the take 

 of the seals there that it is to sustain the Government. This is the 

 only industry upon those islands; and I think that tlie United States 

 is the only country in the world whose (Constitution prohibits its Gov- 

 ernment from levying an export duty. I think it is the only one. 



Sir Charles Russell. — I take the liberty of saying, sir, that I did 

 not ])resume to offer any opinion in the sense of condemnation, or even 

 of adverse criticism upon what the United States choose to do. I was 

 merely dealing with the pretensions put forward that the United States 

 were appearing in this matter simply as champions for the interests of 

 the world, as friends of humanity, and were merely offering as trustees 

 or intermediaries this article of luxury for the benefit a^nd in the inter- 

 est of mankind, or of womankind. 



