FUR SEALS OF ALASKA. 7 
vided for. What was the opinion of these lawyers of this committee? 
[Reading from memorandum:] 
The question being raised pending the consideration of the House bill (No. 8633) 
introduced by Governor Nelson Dingley, jr., the attorney for the lessees, Gen. N. L. 
Jeffries, argued at length against the right of the Government to completely suspend 
the work of the lessees, as the terms of the pending bill ordered. 
Thereupon the subcommittee held: 
1. That the clause in the lease which binds the lessees to ‘‘ obey and abide by any 
restrictions upon the right to kill seals that the Secretary of the Treasury shall judge 
necessary, under the law, for the preservation of the seal fisheries of the United 
States’’ enables the Government (the Secretary of the Treasury being the agent only 
of Congress) at any time to completely restrict or suspend the work of the lessees. 
This authority for this restriction 1s found in section 3 of the act approved July 1, 1870. 
2. That the right to kill seals for natives’ food is expressly reserved by section 1 
of the act approved July 1, 1870, for the Government, and is not covered or merged 
into the terms of the lease which are authorized by section 4 of the act approved 
July 1, 1870. 
This report was unanimous. It was’ unanimously adopted by the 
full committee. They were good lawyers, gentlemen, and the bill 
was reported by Chairman Wilson. (Report No. 1849, 53d Cong., 3d 
sess.) That is all thrashed over pretty thoroughly. 
Now, gentlemen, I want to come right back to the other obligations 
of this contract. 
The lessees claim that they have a benevolent arrangement under 
their lease, and they will be put to great expense if they are suddenly 
suspended. Idenyit. The Government has borne the entire expense 
of caring for these people since 1890. The Treasury rules and regu- 
lations, which I have here, are so framed that the company to-day 
does not expend one dollar under the terms of their contract for the 
support of those natives. It takes it out of them by the fox-skin con- 
tract, and it takes it out of them from 10 to 20 per cent on the store 
goods which it sells to them. The whole cost of their benevolent con- 
tract with these natives is not five or six thousand dollars a year— 
coal, doctors, and schools. 
That is all that comes under the benevolent contract. Their widows 
and orphans’ clause costs about $150 a year. They take from four to 
five thousand dollars away from the natives under the fox-skin regula- 
tion which might go to the natives just as well as not. They take 
from 10 to 20 per cent on the store goods easily, which brings it up to 
seven or eight thousand dollars. This amount they get, in short, 
directly back from the natives. So they are even, so far as the benevo- 
lent contract is concerned, and if it was suspended the Government 
has got nothing to do but go on just.as it has been doing—paying the 
whole thing. There will be no hitch, no crook in lifting them at once 
from that work of killing, and so saving this life. There is no legal 
difficulty, and there is no moral trouble about it, and if we do not do 
it we have lost this life. 
I have all these items here, and I am ready to answer any ques- 
tion and close. ; 
Mr. Hiri. What is the difference between you and Doctor Jordan 
in regard to the policy to be followed? 
Mr. Ex.iotr. Professor Jordan has assumed that there is no such 
thing as excessive land killing of male seals. He has assumed that 
in defiance of the official Russian reports and records, which show that 
the land killing did destroy this herd from millions of seals in 1800 
down to less than 26,000 seals on St. Paul’s Island in 1824 by doing 
