48 INVESTIGATION OF THE FUR-SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 



The wide and scanty hauling of these bulls to-day on those breed- 

 ing grounds for this season of 1913, together with the strange massing 

 of immense harems around single bulls, while others immediately 

 around have no part in the service, renders a tabulation on the basis 

 of 1872-1874, or even 1890, entirely out of the question as a measure 

 of just contrast. We will not attempt to do it. The figures for 1890 

 gave 11,708 bulls for St. Paul and 800 for St. George. We have 

 against those figures 1,413 for St. Paul and 318 for St. George. 



This decrease of virile male life on the breeding grounds causes the 

 normal ratio of 15 or 20 females to a male, made in 1872-1874, now to 

 reach way beyond that ratio, to 50 or even 100 females. Many of the 

 bulls are very old to-day. There is no appreciable number of young 

 males left alive to take their places on these breeding grounds, nor 

 are they in evidence, except as a shadow of what they ought to be, 

 as we have indicated in our figures and life study description above. 

 They eloquently testify by their absence to the disturbance of that 

 normal ratio, which is imperative if this herd is to regain its fine form 

 and number as recorded in 1872 and 1874. We have destroyed .by 

 land and in the sea that equilibrium which nature had reestablished 

 away back in 1857, after the Russians had destroyed it in 1834, just 

 as we have done since 1889-90 on these rookeries, and we must now 

 restore it. It can only be restored by permitting those natural laws 

 which govern its best form and number to reassert themselves un- 

 checked by us. We must let them alone until that year opens when 

 they shall give us evidence that at least two or three millions of them 

 are in existence of all classes as against the scant 200,000 living to-day. 



The pelagic sealer kills all the males and all the females that come 

 within his reach, from 1890 to 1912, getting 10 per cent males and 90 

 per cent females. 



The lessees kill all of the young male seals, and none of the females 

 save the 3 T carlings which haul out on the islands from 1896 to 1910, 

 and that killing is continued by the department to 1912. 



Result: That (the males and females, being born equal in number) 

 the males are all killed long before all of the females are. 



Proof: That only 1,500 breeding males are on the Pribilof rookeries 

 to-day, while 80,000 breeding females are there with them, and no 

 young breeding bulls alive, to note, more than 3 years old, which do 

 not breed until 6 years old. 



A SWORN STATEMENT OF THE MANNER AND METHODS ADOPTED BY 

 H. W. ELLIOTT IX MAKING A CENSUS OF THE PRIBILOF ROOKERIES, 

 SEASONS OF 1872-1874, AND 1890. 



[Hearing No. 4, pp. 1S-1-193, July 11, 1911, House Committee on Expenditures in the Department of Com- 

 merce and Labor.] 



[Cleveland Plain Dealer, Sept. 25, 1899.1 



The Alaska Seal Question. 



prof. elliott declares that the case of the united states has been given 



away by the jordan commission. 



The final report of Dr. Jordan on the fur seals of the Pribilof Islands has been 

 recently issued. The preliminary reports of this gentleman in 1896 and 1897 have 

 been variously commented on in the press as they appeared during the last two years, 

 and the public generally were led to believe that some practical good was to -accrue 

 from the investigation which he was conducting; but our people now know that 



