BULLETIN NUMBER SIX 17 



the year around. On December 11, 1917, Mr. Sulzer intro- 

 duced a substitute bill (H. R. 7344) which took the place 

 of the first bill. On Feb. 5, 1918, the House Committee on 

 Territories, Hon. William G. Houston, Chairman, gave its 

 first hearing on Bill No. 7344. 



The report of that hearing was promptly printed, and 

 it produced a profound sensation. It revealed a degree of 

 industry and lawlessness in the killing of valuable game, 

 and of activity in the sale of game, that among many of 

 the friends of Alaskan game had been quite unknown and 

 unsuspected. 



It was soon revealed that the real purpose of the Sulzer 

 bill was not to feed frontier people who were starving, but 

 to enable the population of the City of Fairbanks and other 

 towns to side-step the "beef monopoly" by eating moose, 

 sheep and caribou at a price lower than that of monopo- 

 listic beef! 



In order to make the situation perfectly clear it is worth 

 while to quote freely from the testimony given at the hear- 

 ing on the Sulzer bill. 



Mr. Charles Sheldon. — Here is this vast wilderness, for thousands 

 and thousands of miles around, with game abounding. The sheep 

 are back in the mountains, and the caribou are back 100 or 125 miles 

 from the districts where the people live. The people live mostly down 

 on the river, except for a few mining camps. If you want me to take 

 the time I can describe the whole thing to you. There in winter they 

 are shut up, at the mercy of the beef monopoly; and about these 

 camps are game, and with this whole enormous area just teeming 

 with wild game, and only a few thousand people to avail themselves 

 of it, do you think those people are going to sit there, and pay the 

 prices charged by the monopoly for beef, when this wild game is near 

 or in the hills? Of course not. And what has been the result? They 

 have gone out and killed the game. We have had our game law, but 

 in spite of that, in answer to the demands of the stomach and rather 

 than be held up by the beef monopoly, they have simply gone out and 

 killed game. When I was up there, and I venture to say it is not 

 far different today, if they hauled a breaker of the game laws into 

 Fairbanks they could not get judge or jury to convict him. 



The opinion was so absolutely unanimous that the people were 

 entitled to this relief from the beef monopoly that the officers of the 

 law could not convict anybody for breaking the game laws, and they 

 stopped trying to convict anybody. 



