2 FUR SEALS OF ALASKA. 
about to make. But when we are face to face, as a recent Senatorial 
investigating committee declares, with a condition of affairs on the 
Pribilof Islands which demands our immediate action in holding up 
the hands of our own butchers on the islands and paying no attention 
to the men in the sea who are killing seals there I think I am justified 
in coming before you again. 
Mr. Chairman, the Secretary of the Treasury, in his last annual 
report to Congress, and just before he turned it over to the Secretary 
of Commerce and Labor last summer, July 1, devotes two short para- 
graphs to this question only. There is not a line in those paragraphs 
which speaks of the slightest danger to this life up there; not a hint in 
it that he intends. or thinks it is proper to stop any killing that is now 
allowed by law up there; not a word about the Loe hunters who 
have taken 27,000 skins there; there is in its text not the slightest sug- 
gestion that anything is wrong, and it passes from him and goes to the 
Secretary of Commerce and Labor on the Ist of July last. 
Mr. Dauzeu. I have just read this resolution for the first time. Is 
there any contract in existence? 
Mr. Exuiotr. I am coming to that. Oh, yes; 1 will explain that 
‘fully; I know about that. J aided Mr. Windom in drawing that up. 
He consulted with me over it, having at the time an idea that he might 
be obliged to suspend the work of the lessees wholly or in part very 
soon. 
The Cuarrman. I would suggest that you spend more time on that 
matter than the other. Of course every member knows more or less 
about the seal fisheries. I presume you have gotten all this in those 
printed documents? 
Mr. Exxiorr. Yes. 
The CuarrmMan. I would suggest that you address yourself more 
particularly to this point—whether this isa remedy and whether there 
are any difficulties in the way or contracts in the way. 
Mr. Extiotr. I simply wanted to show the warrant for my being 
here, on account of the deficiency of knowledge in these departmental 
reports. Mr. Cortelyou on the Ist of July takes this up. He 
inherits these agents of the Treasury Department and he inherits all 
the machinery of the business without any knowledge of it himself; 
and, in one sense of the word, of course, he is in no way responsible 
for anything that has taken place. He takes it up, and in his first 
annual report he gives you an itemized account of what they have 
taken on those islands, but he does not allude to the work of the 
pelagic sealers; he does not give youa hint of a desire to stop the 
killing; but he goes further than Secretary Shaw-—he does declare 
that the breeding bulls on these rookeries in the last three years have 
diminished nearly 50 per cent. But he says in the same breath that 
the cows have increased 9 per cent. This seems to have given Mr. 
Cortelyou an idea that there was something wrong about the charge 
that the pelagic hunter was doing all the harm. 
Fifty per cent of our breeding bulls have been killed off, and yet at 
and in the same time there is an increase of 9 per cent in the cows! 
That fact evidently strikes Mr. Cortelyou as something remarkable, 
but he does not say anything more. He also refers to the fact that 
these Canadian pelagic seal hunters have appeared as “Japanese” 
hunters. He says the presence of sealing schooners in sight of the 
islands this summer, before the beginning of the pelagic season in 
