64 INVESTIGATION OF THE FUB-SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 



Mr. McGuire. Does that involve the conclusion of anyone else? Are those con- 

 clusions of your own based 



Dr. Evermann (interposing). No; those are the conclusions of these twenty-odd 

 people, whose names I have read. Now, on the other side, against those 22, we will 

 place Mr. Elliott and Mr. Elliott alone. 



[Hearing No. 10, pp. 519, 521, Apr. 20, 1913, House Committee on Expenditures in the Department 



of Commerce and Labor.] 



In 1913, therefore, at least 6,000 superfluous males must be left to grow up as bulls. 

 This must go on for five years, and in the end there will be in the years immediately 

 following 1917 a total of 30,000 adult bulls. In 1912 no more than 1,500 bulls were 

 needed by the herd. It can by no possibility use more than 3,000 bulls in 1917 and 

 not over 4,000 in 1920. In the period following 1917 there will be 9 idle bulls for 1 in 

 service. The inevitable damage to the rookeries which this condition of fighting will 

 entail can be but faintly realized even by those who in 1896-97 witnessed a somewhat 

 similar state of the rookeries due to a shorter period of suspension, 1891-1893. In 

 1896-97 there were an adult idle bull and two young bulls for each active bull. The 

 conditions which we are to face in 1917 and thereafter is a condition where the ratio 

 will be 9 to 1 instead of 3 to 1. These idle bulls once saved must live out their natural 

 life (p. 6). 



The nonsense and untruth of the above, the positive untruth and 

 abject nonsense of it, can be fully appreciated by reading the facts 

 set forth in Exhibit A antea; concluding pages. 



Each one of the 30,000 useless bulls will have carried, as a 3-year-old, a skin worth 

 $40 to the Government. These skins will be lost — a sheer waste of $1,200,000. And 

 this is a minimum figure, as the product of the hauling grounds will increase steadily. 

 Furthermore, the cutting off of the regular supply of sealskins for five years will affect 

 the market. Sealskins will be superseded by other furs, and when the Government 

 is ready to seek an outlet for its increased quotas of 1918 and 1919, the market will be 

 found sluggish and the prices low (p. C). 



This is the argument of Simple Simon, who killed the goose which 

 laid the golden egg. See Exhibit A, antea, for illustration of it fully, 

 in concluding pages. 



This remarkable circular of untruth fitly ends with the following 

 "foxy" statement: 



The amendment suspending land killing has provided for the human residents of the 

 Pribilof [elands, by allowing a limited amount of killing for fresh meat for natives' 

 food. There is, however, other animal life on the islands which, through a century of 

 habit, has come to depend upon the products of the killing field for an important part 

 of its sustenance. Most important among these animals is the Arctic blue fox. The 

 fox herd is small, but is, animal to animal, as valuable as is the fur seal. In the 40 

 years of our control 40.000 peltsof blue foxes have been taken. The herd is capable of 

 indefinite expansion through increase of food supply. In summer, when the birds 

 are present, the foxes are fairly well provided for. but in winter their chief dependence 

 is in the carcasses of t he seals left on the killing fields. They were beginning to starve 

 and eat one another on the Pribilof Islands at the time the junior author left there this 

 fall. The killing fields were absolutely bare. It is certain that the blue-fox herd 

 will be decimated before spring, and it the suspension of land killing is continued for 

 the full live years, unless artificial feeding is substituted — a thing difficult of accom- 

 plishment — the blue-fox herd will be wiped out or at least reduced to a point so low 

 that its restoration will be a matter of years. 



The birds, of which there are thousands upon thousands on the islands, are not 

 economically useful to man. but it may be added that they, too, are affected by this 

 unnecessary, harmful, and wasteful suspension of land killing (pp. 6, 7). 



The best answers which we can make to this idle and fairly puerile 

 demand for seal slaughter that the fox herd is- dependent on seal 

 killing for its existence is the following official entry made by Ezra W. 

 Clark, United States special agent, who has been busy on St. George 

 Island for nearly 10 years, studying the fox question in that time: 

 from every angle. 



