60 FUR SEALS OF ALASKA. 
rules and regulations impose upon him. So, in spite of the speedy decline annually 
of the herd, he is enabled to apparently find more seals to-day than he did three 
years ago. 
VICTORIA SEALERS. 
The Victoria Sealing Company, of Victoria, British Columbia, has declared a divi- 
dend of 50 cents a share on the business of the past year. The sealing fleet of the 
British Columbia coast this season will comprise about twenty vessels; schooners 
will also be sent as usual to Japanese waters. (Fur Trade Review, New York, p. 85, 
February 1, 1904.) 
This combination of the business of the pelagic fur-sealing fleet, known as the 
Victoria Sealing Company (Limited), of Victoria, V. I., was made in 1898; it was 
done primarily in 1897, as the Victoria Sealers’ Association, with the Hudson Bay 
Company and R. P. Rithet & Co., of Victoria, as the trustees. 
The suggestion having been made by Doctor Jordan and C. §. Hamlin in the fall 
of 1896 (the former, commissioner in charge of fur-seal investigations, and the other 
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury) that the Government would buy out the Cana- 
dian fleet, in settlement of the pelagic hunting problem, these hunters got together. 
They appraised their vessels and lumped the sum, so that it aggregated nearly 
$700,000, and then prepared to deal with the question as an association duly organ- 
ized, etc. : 
When the Joint High Commission came into the field this association was all ready 
for business, and it actually got a subcommittee of our representatives, Messrs. Fair- 
banks and Foster, to agree upon the payment to them of a lamp sum of $500,000 for 
their fleet of some thirty small schooners and paraphernalia; but when it came to 
selling the rights of a British subject to seal or fish in the open waters of Bering Sea, 
or the North Pacific, Sir Wilfrid said they could not bé sold. Thata right in turn of 
ours must be conceded; a free port on Lynn Canal, or some tariff concession. 
That at once ended the negotiations and the Canadians have not changed their 
attitude since. 
The Victoria Sealing Company (Limited), of Victoria, to-day controls every vessel 
and every pelagic hunter engaged in the business of fur sealing at sea; every hunter, 
white or Indian, that kills Alaskan seals at sea is under the orders of this company, 
and obeys them. ; 
The twenty-three or twenty-four schooners which comprise its fleet are those which 
are actually engaged; but the whole number of vessels which are in its control is 
between thirty-five and forty. . 
This sealing company is capitalized at $500,000, and the full amount of stock to 
that sum is issued in shares of $1 each; it covers all the vessels and paraphernalia, 
which, in turn, were inventoried and valued in 1900 as follows (Report Minister 
Marine and Fisheries, 1900, Canada, p. 203): 
BO VESSCIS ais zits a's aires seeped e eiema dg ci cre woe mien one SES ated bid $207, 645 
102 hunting boats, dories, skiffs, etc -..--.--.--..-.---------------------- 10, 200 
336 hunting canoes ...-..------------ Wemce panacea aries Seema Sa lelacAaeiciems oe 8, 150 
Total value......-...- Anan RRA SI AR AAT AN ERT REUSE 225, 995 
(P.. 208, Sessional Papers, vol. xxxlv, No. 9, 1900, 63 Victoria, A, 1900, Sessional 
Paper, No. 11a.) 
The above official valuation of the fleet is very liberal, and the amount given is 
certainly well above the actual capital invested. 
Therefore a dividend of 50 cents per share, or of $250,000 declared and paid on the 
stock of the Victoria Sealing Company, as the profits of its season’s work in 1903, is 
an enormous and lucrative return to the stockholders. 
The pelagic catch of Alaskan fur seals in 1903 was 27,000 skins. These skins sold 
in London at an average per skin of $17. The average cost of each skin from hunter 
to London sale (including the extra cost of the ‘Japanese Canadian’? masquerade) 
is not to exceed $7 per skin; this would leave the net profit at least $270,000 for the 
season’s work of 1908, It is quite as likely that it was at least $300,000, because, 
without the increased ‘‘Japanese’’ expense, the average cost of the skins would not 
go over $5 each, about $4.50 to $5 each. 
On Bering Sea.—In 1903 not more than 23 or 24 vessels were employed actively. 
On them were some 213 white sailors and hunters, 607 Indian hunters, 200 (?) Jap- 
anese sailors and hunters. 
