18983 A Campaign of Obstruction 



land-killing seems to have been to induce Canada 

 and Japan to abrogate the treaty on the ground that 

 by the new limitation they would each receive only 

 about ^20,000 a year instead of the ^200,000 (more 

 or less) which they had reason to expect when 

 negotiations were concluded. It will, of course, be Menace of 

 understood that the treaty once dishonored, pelagic ""f^^f'^^'^ 

 sealing would then have gone on unchecked, and with sealing 

 increasingly disastrous results. But in the confu- 

 sion of world war, the whole matter seemed to drop 

 out of notice; and the protests naturally to be ex- 

 pected from the two countries never materialized, 

 so far as I know. Normal killing having now been 

 resumed, the annual receipts of Canada and Japan 

 are individually (1920) not far from ^500,000. 

 That enormous increase is, however, largely due 

 to the rise in fur values, resulting from an inordinate 

 demand for luxuries and the thinning-out or ex- 

 tirpation of other fur-bearing animals.^ 



The campaign of obstruction took on two aspects Unsound 

 — one apparently humanitarian, condemning the '^^^^^^^s 

 slaughter of wild creatures; the other the old base- 

 less clamor that reduction of the breeding herd was 

 largely due to land-killing of males.^ Nagel took no 



' In 1918, 34,890 salted undressed skins which had been taken in 1917 were 

 sold at auction for $46.34 apiece; in 1919, 27,821 skins brought $78.38 apiece; 

 at St. Louis, February 2, 1920, 9100 skins averaged $140.98 each, or a total of 

 $1,182,905. By 1925 it may be possible to obtain, and without injury to the 

 herd, 100,000 skins yearly, as in the early '8o's; these should be worth between 

 $5,000,000, and $10,000,000. 



^ More discreditable, because underhanded, were the attacks by a well- 

 known lobbyist on Clark, who, as secretary of the two commissions and later 

 scientific expert in charge of the herd, had become the unquestioned authority on 

 the Fur Seal. These slurs took the form of abusive letters over assumed names, 

 addressed to the press and to various individuals with whom Clark was connected, 

 the trustees of Stanford University, and even "Greek-letter" groups among the 

 students. Of course no one familiar with his sterling integrity paid the slightest 

 attention to the slanders, although he himself was naturally pained by them. 



C 609 1 



