8 FUR-SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 



before commercial killing was again resumed. (See pp. 183-186. 

 hearing No. 1 ; pp. 671-678, hearing - No. 3.) 



That Dr. David Starr Jordan should have made an elaborate report 

 to the Secretary of the Treasury in 1898, wholly based upon a de- 

 liberate and studied falsification of the Russian sealing records of 

 1800-1834, is proven by the official records of the Proceedings of the 

 Tribunal of Arbitration, Volumes VII, pages 13-14, 152-153, and 

 VIII, pages 305-323, and which proof is fully carried in the testi- 

 mony given on pages 671-678, hearing No. 3. 



That Dr. Jordan ; nd his associates, who prepared this false-based 

 report aforesaid, did so to shield and conceal the truth as to the 

 ruinous work of the land killing by the lessees < n the Pribilof Islands 

 is beyend question, since the truth in the premises had it been told 

 by Jordan in 1896 and 1898 would have compelled the immediate 

 removal of the lessees from the islands and would have led to a 

 betterment of the conditions involved at once. 



Your committee, taking due note of all the testimony given and 

 carefully reviewing the same, together with that relating to the cer- 

 tified records given it by the United States Bureau of Fisheries, of the 

 London sales of fur-seal skins, which were secured as small pups and 

 extra-small pups illegally on the Pribilof Islands by the lessees thereof 

 in violation of the law and regulations of the Government, find that 

 said lessees have taken since 1896 at least 128,000 such yearling fur- 

 seal skins as were distinctly prohibited and denied to them by law 

 and regulations, said illegal and ruinous killing being annually done 

 by them from 1898 to the end of their lease, May 1, 1910. (See hear- 

 ing No. 1, pp. 213-280, 1914.) The committee therefore recommends: 



(1) That the Attorney General be requested to take such steps as 

 may be necessary to collect the bond of $500,000 from said North 

 American Commercial Co. and the sureties thereon. 



(2) That the Attorney General be requested to institute civil pro- 

 ceedings against Isaac Liebes and his associate lessees and legal repre- 

 sentatives to recover such damages as he and his confederates did to 

 the seal herd of Alaska from 1S90 to 1910 and to proceed against such 

 other persons who are and may be also implicated, 



(3) That, with a view to carrying these recommendations into 

 effect, the ( lerk of the House be directed to forward to the Attorney 

 General a certified copy of this report, together with a complete set of 

 the official hearings held before and by this committee on this sub- 

 ject, with the request that the Attorney General proceed in the case 

 as the law and evidence direct for the good of the public interests 

 concerned. 



( ) 



