54 FUR-SEAL HEED OF ALASKA. 



breeding life on the Pribilof Islands would be extinct. (See Rept. Ways and Means 

 Com., 2303; 57tli Cong., 1st sess., pp. 4, 5.) 



The committee overruled the Secretary of the Treasury and agreed with me; it 

 reported and passed a House bill, February 2, 1903, which would have put an end 

 to the inhuman and indecent business of the pelagic hunter had it not been again 

 defeated in the Senate by a false statement made to the Senate F'oreign Relations 

 Committee by Senator Fairbanks, February 17, 1903, who assured his colleagues that 

 an agreement to a satisfactory settlement had been reached in the Anglo-American 

 Joint High Commission, and that that commission would publish it soon after it 

 recouA^ened; that that reconvention would take place soon after the 4th of March, 

 1903; hence the House bill was not necessary. 



I knew that this statement of Senator Fairbanks was without warrant and said so to 

 his colleagues in the Senate at the time, but the sine die adjournment on March 4 

 prevented action, and so this second attempt to suppress the pelagic hunter failed. 

 And it failed not from any want of understanding of the destructive effect of pelagic 

 sealing, as the Secretary of Commerce and Labor says existed until the Sims report 

 of 190G had been made. Mr. Metcalf was himself a member of the Ways and Means 

 Committee in 1902, when I gave that body the full understanding of this work of 

 pelagic sealing, and he was also a member when I again reenforced my argument of 

 1902 with figures and facts, March 9-10, 1904. 



He also heard my indictment of the excessive land killing by the lessees before this 

 committee in 1904; he heard it denied by the lessees, and only partly agreed to by 

 the Department of Commerce and Labor, solely on the strength of my showing March 

 9-10, 1904, did the department pledge to the committee the annual reservation of 

 2,000 choice young male seals from slaughter by the lessees on the Pribilof Islands. 



On the 26th of October, 1905, the agent of the department in charge of the seal 

 islands of Alaska, in an official report admits that my charge of injury through 

 excessive land killing by the lessees is correct. (See p. 81, S. Doc. No. 98, 59th 

 Cong., 1st sess.) 



On page 33 of Secretary Metcalf's report for 1906 he tells us that the lessees during 

 the season of 1906 "took 14,643 fur-seal skins, including 281 skins taken during the 

 previous season." Then, in this same paragraph, and immediately following, he says 

 that only 10,942 seals were killed on St. Paul Island and 1.685 seals were killed on 

 St. George Island during the season of 1906. This analysis which he makes of his 

 own figures declares the fact that 2,016 skins, and not "281 skins," came over into 

 the catch of 1906 from 1905. 



The significance of this you will at once observe when you understand that these 

 2,016 skins were the "food seals," which were killed in October and November, 1905, 

 and still more, they were the 2.000 choice young male seals ordered spared and sheared 

 (not branded) in June and early July, 1905, this sheared mark having entirely disap- 

 peared by the middle or end of September, since every fur seal by the end of Septem- 

 ber annually completely renews it own hair — sheds and grows it anew in August and 

 September. 



That this is not even faintly understood by the Secretary is plain, for in the next 

 paragraph he proceeds to tell us that "in addition to the branded seals reserved for 

 breeding purposes, 4,724 small and 1,944 large seals were dismissed from the drives 

 as being ineligible for killing under the department's regulations." 



More misinformation with regard to the subject can not be put into fewer words. 

 Witness the following: 



I. These seals were not branded; they were sheared instead, in June and early July. 

 Then by the end of September they completely lose this mark of reservation, and 

 each and every one of them that hauls out on the Pribilof Islands during October- 

 November is killed as a "food" seal, and the lessees get the skins, which are carried 

 over into the catch for the next season. (See the official proof of this on pp. 8, 64, 65, 

 and 86 of S. Doc. No. 98, 59th Cong., 1st sess.) 



II. These "4,774 small" seals do not represent in fact more than 800 or 1,000 such 

 seals. Most of these seals have been recounted over and over again as they were 

 redriven and then dismissed during the season. Some of them have reappeared in 

 this fictitious total six or seven times. 



III. These "1,944 large seals" were the sheared and spared seals of 1906 so marked 

 in June and early July. Last October and November they were killed as they hauled 

 out, as "food " seals, and their skins will appear in the quota or catch of the lessees for 

 1907, if these men are permitted to kill next season. 



With regard to the report of Mr. Sims, I shall not dwell upon the many obvious and 

 plain errors of statement and conclusion which appear in it. I do not do so because 

 he admits that his experience in the premises is limited to a short week on the seal 

 islands during the summer of 1906. No man, it matters not how great his inherent 

 ability, can master this question and intelligently discuss it with so little experience. 



