252 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



net, under the system now in operation than it would by taking the 

 exckisive control of the business. Were any capable government 

 officer supplied with, say, $100,000, to expend in " working the 

 market," and intrusted with the disposal of one hundred thousand 

 seal-skins wherever he could do so to the best advantage of the 

 Government, and were this agent a man of first-class abilit}^ and 

 energ}', I think it quite likely- that the same success might attend 

 his labor in the London inarket that distinguishes the management 

 of the Alaska Commercial Company. But imagine the cry of fraud 

 and embezzlement that would be raised against him, however hon- 

 est he might be ! This alone would bring the whole business into 

 jDOsitive disrepute, and make it a national scandal. As matters are 

 now conducted there is no room for scandal — not one single trans- 

 action on the islands but what is as clear to investigation and ac- 

 countability as the light of the noon-day sun ; what is done is 

 known to everybody, and the tax now laid by the Government up- 

 on, and paid into the treasury every year by the Alaska Commer- 

 cial Company yields alone a handsome rate of interest on the en- 

 tire purchase-money expended for the ownership of all Alaska. 



It is frequently urged with great persistency, by misinformed 

 and malicious authority, that the lessees can and do take thousands 

 of skins in excess of the law, and this catch in excess is shipped 

 sub rosa to Jaj^an from the Pribylov Islands. To show the foil}' of 

 such a move on the part of the Company, if even it were possible, 

 I will briefly recapitulate the conditions under which the skins are 

 taken. The natives of St. Paul and St. George do themselves, in 

 the manner I have indicated, all the driving and skinning of the 

 seals for the company. No others are permitted or asked to land 

 upon the islands to do this work, so long as the inhabitants of the 

 islands are equal to it. They have been equal to it and they are 

 more than equal to it. Every skin taken by the natives is counted 

 by themselves, as they get forty cents per pelt for that labor, and, 

 at the expiration of each day's work in the field, the natives know 

 exactly how many skins have been taken by them, how many 

 of these skins have been rejected by the company's agent be- 

 cause they were carelessly cut and damaged in skinning — usually 

 about three-fourths of one per cent, of the whole catch — and they 

 have it recorded every evening by those among them who are 

 charged with the duty. Thus, were one hundred and one thousand 

 skins taken, instead of one hundred thousand allowed by law, the 



