HUNTINU AND THE FUR INDUSTRY 



137 



Thus the success of the sealskin trade is due in a considerable degree to the Alaska 

 Company having been able to organize on a sound basis the commercial and the industrial 

 part of the undertaking. And yet at the same time it acted upon the islands leased by it so 

 rapaciously, and reduced the scanty population to such a hopeless position, that it excited just 

 reproaches both in America and in Russia. Making use of its privileged position, the Alaska 

 Company furnished the inhabitants of the islands with all the necessary supplies, but fixed 

 the prices so high that notwithstanding the high earnings of the inhabitants from the seal, 

 beaver, arctic fox and fishing industries, they always remained in debt to the Company, and 

 were constantly in want of every necessary. During the first fifteen years Messrs. Hutchinson, 

 Cool, Filipeus and Co. paid the treasury annually 5,000 roubles, and in addition to this a 

 payment per skin to the extent above stated, which on an average amounted to 64,420 roubles 

 per annum, assuming the average yearly catch in Russian fisheries at 34,200 fur seals. 

 Independently of the said payment to the Crown, the Company paid the inhabitants on an 

 average 37,588 roubles per annum. The same Company for the same 15 years caught on the 

 Pribylov islands on an average 95,930 seals per annum, that is, about two and a half times 

 as many as in the Russian waters, but paid the Government of the United States much more 

 in proportion. The lease cost 110,000 roubles, that is, 22 times that paid in Russia; the royalty 

 payments amounted on an average to 504,000 roubles, that is, 8 times as much, and 

 finally the inhabitants received 77,000 roubles, that is, quite twice as much, although their 

 number on the Pribylov and Commander Islands was approximately the same. In consequence 

 of this, in order on the one hand, to somewhat increase the revenue to the Crown from the 

 seal industry, and on the other, as far as possible, to regulate the relations between the lessee 

 from the Crown and the inhabitants of the Commander Islands, the question arose of the 

 renewal of the contract with the firm of Hutchinson, Cool, Filipeus and Co. before the expiration 

 of the lease, with the cundition of the immediate increase of the payment per skin in favour 

 of the Government. 



The company expressed its readiness to increase the piece payment to 7 roubles, during 

 the course of both a new 10 years lease and the three years unexpired of the action of the 

 old contract. Under these conditions, the increase of the rent came out approximately at 



