394 FUR-SEAL FISHERIES OF ALASKA. 



cease, as the company can not permit itself to be made an instrument of oppression 

 toward any one that they may come in contact with. 



It is useless to add that, in case of absolute poverty and want, the person or persons 

 placed in that unfortunate position should be promptly furnished with the means of 

 subsistence without pay, simply reporting such facts at your earliest convenience to 

 the home office. 



Asking your strict compliance with the foregoing instructions, which we hope will 

 be carried out with due discretion on your part, I am, with kind regards to yourself 

 and Mrs. Lorenz, 

 Yours, truly, 



Lewis Gerstle, 



President. 

 Mr. M. Lorenz, 



Agent, St. Michaels, Alaska. 



No. 8. 



EXTRACTS FROM THE REPORT OF HENRY W. ELLIOTT TO THE SUPERINTENDENT OF 

 CENSUS, FROM VOL. VIII, TENTH CENSUS UNITED STATES, 1880, PP. 26, 27. 



It will be remembered that at the time of the question of leasing the islands was . 

 before Congress much opposition to the proposal was made, on several grounds, by 

 two classes, one of which argued against a " monopoly," the other urging that the 

 Government itself would realize more by taking the whole management of the busi- 

 ness into its own hands. At that time far away from Washington, in the Rocky 

 Mountains, I do not know what arguments were used in the committee rooms or who 

 made them; but since my careful and prolonged study of the subject on the ground 

 itself, and of the trade and its condition, I am now satisfied that the act of Juue, 

 1870, directing the Secretary of the Treasury to lease the seal islands of Alaska to the 

 highest bidder, under the existing conditions and qualifications, did the best and the 

 only correct aud profitable thing that could have been done in the matter, both with 

 regard to the preservation of the seal life in its original integrity and the pecuniary 

 advantage of the Treasury itself. To make this statement perfectly clear the follow- 

 ing facts by way of illustration should be presented: 



First. When the Government took possession of these interests in 1868 and 1869 

 the gross value of a seal skin laid down in the best market at London was less in 

 some instances and in others but slightly above the present tax and royalty jiaid 

 upon it by the Alaska Commercial Company. 



Second. Through the action of the intelligent business men who took the contract 

 from the Government, in stimulating and encouraging the dressers of the raw mate- 

 rial and in taking sedulous care that nothing but good skins should leave the islands, 

 and in combination with leaders of fashion abroad, the demand for the fur by this 

 manipulation aud management has been wonderfully increased. 



Third. As matters now stand the greatest and best interests of the lessees are iden- 

 tical with the Government; what injures one instantly injures the other. In other 

 words, both strive to guard against anything that shall interfere with the preserva- 

 tion of the seal life in its original integrity, and both having it to their interest, if 

 possible, to increase that life; if the lessees had it in their power, which they cer- 

 tainly have not, to ruin these interests by a few seasons of rapacity, they are so 

 bonded and so environed that prudence prevents it. 



Fourth. The frequent changes in the office of the Secretary of the Treasury, who 

 has very properly the absolute control of the business as it stands, do not permit upon 

 his part that close, careful scrutiny which is exercised by the lessees, who, unlike him, 

 have but their one purpose to carry out. The character of the leading men among 

 them is enough to assure the public that the business is iu responsible hands, and in 

 the care of persons who will use every effort for its preservation and pei-petuatiou, as 

 it is so plainly their best end to serve. Another great obstacle to the success of the 

 business, if controlled entirely by the Government, would be encountered in disposing 

 of the skins after they had been brought down from the islands. It would not do to 

 sell them up there to the highest bidder, since that would license the sailing of a 

 thousand ships to bo present at the sale. The rattling of their anchor chains, and 

 the scraping of their keels on the beaches of the two little islands would alone drive 

 every seal away and over to the Russian grounds iu a remarkably short space of time. 

 The Government would therefore need to offer them at public auction in this country, 

 and it would be simply history repeating itself, the Government would be at the mercy 

 of any well-organized combinatiou of buyers. The agents conducting the sale could 

 not counteract the effect of such a combinatiou as can the agents of a private cor- 



