192 THE FUR SEALS OF THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 
THE WILD-ANIMAL POLICY. 
This policy, which systematically treated the fur seals as wild animals, bore fruit 
later on, when the theory of exclusive ownership in the seals became vital to the 
interests of the Government. This theory, being wholly incompatible with its 
management of the herd, was legally untenable. It is safe to say that had the 
United States looked after its herd with the care and attention that a cattleman on 
the plains would bestow on his stock, the theory that ownership in the fur-seal herd 
must be shared with the pelagic sealer would not have been established. Had the 
United States in 1886, instead of seizing sealing vessels under a shadowy right of 
jurisdiction over the waters of Bering Sea, branded a mark of ownership upon each 
female, cleansed the rookeries from worm-breeding sands, and then seized the vessels 
that destroyed its property, it is probable that to-day there would be no fur-seal 
question. 
LACK OF FAITH IN OUR OWN METHODS. 
But so little attention had the Government paid to the condition of its herd and 
the results of its own methods of handling the animals, that it was possible in 1891, 
for those interested in maintaining pelagic sealing, to set up the counterclaim that 
our own methods were responsible for the depleted condition of the herd, and the 
Government found itself unable to successfully combat the charge. Indeed, it would 
seem that it was not itself assured of its own innocence, otherwise the useless 
repression of driving in 1894 and 1895, after the modus vivendi, is without explanation. 
In these years, after three years of rest, the full product of the hauling grounds should 
have been taken. Instead of this we find that the taking of seals was limited to two 
drives from each hauling ground in the season, this change being made with the 
avowed purpose of avoiding injury and disturbance to the rookeries. 
WASTEFUL MANAGEMENT. 
We ust again, at the risk of repetition, call attention to the financial loss which 
the management of the fur-seal herd in the first twenty years of our control involved. 
From the published records of the islands we find that no less than 154,000 animals, 
either too young to furnish skins or whose condition was such that the skins were 
not available, were killed and their pelts wasted. Had these animals been killed in 
the proper season or been allowed to grow to the proper age, the revenue in tax alone 
from these skins would have been $460,000. 
Why this waste was permitted we can not understand unless it be that the 
matter was never properly urged upon the attention of the Government. It seems 
certain to us that had the agents in charge of the islands ascertained the uselessness 
and wastefulness of this proceeding it would never have been allowed to continue. 
This money would have paid five times over for competent and systematic 
investigation of the herd from the day it came into control of the United States to 
the present time. It would in all likelihood have averted its depletion and all the 
expensive litigation and friction which the fur-seal question has involved. 
THE TWO VITAL MATTERS YET UNKNOWN. 
There are two important matters which the Government ought to understand in 
order to handle its fur-seal interests intelligently, and these two vital facts it has not 
