FUR-SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 7 



agents to the islands. They killed 6,241 yearlings in violation of law 

 and regulation in 191 1 . This occurred during the months of June and 

 July, 1911. 



In 1912 the said Charles Nagel sent the same guilty Government 

 agents again to the islands, and 1,178 yearlings were killed out of the 

 small total taken of 3,773 seals, in violation of law and regulation. 



VIII. Your committee finds that a regulation as to the weight of 

 skins is futile, for the reason that the skin of a yearling can be taken 

 and sufficient blubber may be added by skinning to make it weigh as 

 much as, and more than, that of a 2-year-old pelt which is properly 

 skinned. The committee further finds that the records made by the 

 agents of the Government in the Bureau of Fisheries during the lease 

 of the sealing company and subsequent thereto were made by skin 

 weight and not by skin measurement, as should have been done. 



IX. Your committee find that Isaac Liebes and the late Herman 

 Liebes were engaged in pelagic sealing at the time that the lease was 

 obtained from the Government: that the late Darius O. Mills, of 

 New York, was a member of the leasing company, as was the late 

 Stephen B. Elkins, Senator from West Virginia; that Lloyd Tevis 

 and Herman and Isaac Liebes were also incorporators and shareholders 

 of the leasing company known as the North American Commercial 

 Co., of San Francisco and New York. (See pp. 224, 225, 285, 290, 

 hearing No. 1.) 



The evidence is full and complete that said licensees had full 

 knowledge of this guilty killing of yearling ami female seals aforesaid; 

 and did annually divide up and participate in the profits "of said 

 illegal killing of seals since 1891 to the end of their lease, May 1 , 1910. 

 (See pp. 305-307, 313-316, hearing No. 1, and p. 707, hearing No. 3.) 



X. Your committee find in further evidence the proof that the 

 Russian sealing records of 1800-1834 have been deliberately falsified 

 by the report of Dr. David Starr Jordan on Fur Seal Investigations, 

 Parts 1-4, 1898, being a report made to the Secretarv of the Treasury, 

 February 24, 1898. 



The significance and design of this falsification of the Russian 

 records of land killing from 1800 to 1834, whereby the herd on the 

 Pribilof Islands was nearly reduced to complete extinction, and to 

 its utter commercial ruin to the latter date, is apparent and self- 

 confessed to the committee by Dr. Jordan's associate and secretary, 

 George A. Clark, who, on February 23, 1913, testified as follows: 



Mr. Clark. The whole fur-seal difficulty at the present time turns on that. If the 

 Russians killed only males, then you have a right to stop land killing, and 1<> say that 

 land killing had something to do with the present state of our herd. If the Russians 

 killed females, then the crisis through which the herd passed in 1835 was due to killing 

 of females just as the crisis through which the herd has passed in 1911 has been due 

 to killing of the females by pelagic sealers on the high seas. 



Mr. McGuire. This is one of the most material points that has been up. (See p. 

 551, hearing No. 2, 1914; House Committee on Expenditures in the Department of 

 Commerce.) 



The testimony and documents produced to the committee show 

 beyond dispute or a shadow of doubt that Dr. Jordan used a false 

 translation of the Russian record of the killing, which enabled him 

 to untruthfully assort that "the Russians killed males and females 

 alike" on the rookeries of the Pribilof Islands from 1800 to 1834, 

 thus destroying the herd and compelling that 10 years' close time 

 which was ordered for the herd by the R. A. Co., from 1834 to 1844, 



