FUR SEALS OF ALASKA. 49 
‘* discovery ” by syndicated letters all over the country, and his asso- 
ciates, Stejneger, Lucas, Moser, Clark, Murray, and Townsend, all 
joined in the chorus. This was ‘‘ science,” with a ‘‘ weight of evi- 
dence” which was awful in its import for me to deny. I did, and 
did so with all plainness of speech. Doctor Jordan now knows that 
the branding of seals is abject tomfoolery. He knows that it accom- 
plishes no sensible purpose whatever. Has he admitted the fact? Is 
. it *‘ scientific” to be dogmatic in error? 
That mistake, like the ‘‘trampled pups,” is another ‘ scientific ” 
blunder, which I never made; but at the same time you will remem- 
ber I told this committee, in this room two years ago, that I was one 
of those men who did not claim to be above making mistakes—that I 
had made them and I had self-confessed them. 
Then he signed up an agreement with the Canadians in 1897, whereby 
he surrendered every indictment we had made against pelagic sealing. 
There is not a hint in that ‘‘ joint agreement,” with its 16 articles, not 
a hint that pelagic sealing is barmful or should be suppressed. How 
did they get him to surrender that? By agreeing to the showing in 
article 9 that ‘‘ during the past two years” there had not been any 
harm in driving the Canadians succeeded in getting him to drop any 
reference to the harm, or suppression, of their work in the sea. They 
‘would not stand, however, for, anything more than the ‘‘ past two 
years” as to the record of harmless land killing, nor for any future but 
the ‘* immediate.” 
So, if he has thus signally failed in those points, how can he claim to 
be an authority in all these matters as against me? 
The CuatrMan. Mr. Jordan has never surrendered the main con 
tention that the main difficulty has been in pelagic sealing. 
Mr. Exxrotr. No; he has not, to us, but he has to the Canadians, 
as I have just pointed out; he has estopped us from making any com- 
plaint, officially, to Great Britain on that score. 
The CuarrMan. So that is about all he has left now? 
Mr. Extiotr, That is all he has left. 
The Cuarrman. Had we not better keep it? 
Mr. Extiotr. The pelagic sealing? 
The Cuarrman. No; our contention that that is the main difficulty 
and the main instrumentality in the destruction of the herd. 
Mr. Exziorr. If that would save that life I would say keep it; but 
we must step in now to stop the elimination of that young male fur- 
seal life by our own butchers. If [ thought that young man [Mr. 
Hitchcock] would stay there, up in his present office, and be in 
charge of this thing as he has outlined the work of killing for next: 
year, and knowing him as I have. known him in the last six weeks, I 
would not object to any modification of this resolution; but is he cer- 
tain to be there? He may be sent somewhere else next year, or death 
may strike him down; so perhaps we ought. to close this out from any 
chance of anybody getting in there and getting around the next man 
who may have charge. The next man may not be so gooda man; and 
it might be broken up. 
The CuarrMan. Congress might change its mind next year and 
repeal it. 
Mr. Exxiorr. I think the chances are infinitely less that that will 
be done by Congress than that he will leave. 
