220 INVESTIGATION OF THE EUR-SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 



Your agent, Mr. Lernbkey, has no warrant or even the shadow of authority to ignore 

 or dispute that table of skin weights which I officially published on page 81, Mono- 

 graph Seal Islands of Alaska in 1881. He can not and will not be permitted to set 

 aside in this idle manner, as he does on page 84, Senate Document No. 376, that 

 long-established and standard agreement of all the United States Treasury agents, 

 the agents of the lessees, and myself, upon these skin weights, from 1872 up to 1881; 

 and, still more, his attempt to deny that record so officially published is in turn flatly 

 denied by the life and growth of the fur seal itself to-day. That life and growth has 

 not changed one hair's breadth from its order when I, first of all men, accurately 

 recorded it in my published work — officially recorded it in 1872-90, inclusive. 



I desire to say that it is with great reluctance that I take up this matter; but I can 

 not let any officialism of to-day reflect ever so little upon my own of yesterday and 

 which I shall defend against all ignorant or venal criticism, now and in the future, 

 just as successfully as I have done so in the past. I refer especially to the "scientific " 

 vagaries of Merriam and Jordan in 1891 and 1896-7 and the venal and calumnious 

 Work of John W. Foster before the Bering Sea Tribunal in 1893. 



In the light of this letter, herewith inclosed, and which can not be truthfully 

 clouded by any man, it must be clear to you that the lessees can not be permitted by 

 you to safely kill a seal next summer on the Pribilof Islands; but your agents can be 

 directed to permit the natives to kill some 2,500 or 3,000 small male seals for food 

 without any risk to mention of doing injury to the public interests concerned. 

 I am, very respectfully, your most obedient servant, 



Henry W. Elliott. 



The back-room officials managed to keep Mr. Straus very quiet — so 

 quiet that Elliott jogged him up a few months later, thus: 



1232 Fourteenth Street, NW., 



Washington, D. C, December 7, 1908. 

 Hon. Oscar Straus, 



Secretary Commerce and Labor. 



Dear Sir: On the 18th of May last I addressed a letter to you, in which I called 

 your attention to the salient errors of statement made to you in the 1906-7 reports 

 of your seal-island agent, as printed by order of the Secretary. (S. Doc. No. 376, 60th 

 Cong., 1st sess.) 



In tbis letter aforesaid I inclosed a published review of that work of your agent. 

 (Plain Dealer. Cleveland, Ohio, May 17, 1908.) I charged the lessees in this article 

 (as inclosed) with the violation of their contract, since in taking their catch for 1907 

 they had killed yearling seals, and had done so because they were obliged to kill them 

 or fail to get the 15,000 skins you allowed them to get under the terms of the Hitchcock 

 rules. To get them they have openly violated those regulations of the department, and 

 the inclosed evidence of their own sales agent in London convicts them of that 

 charge — indisputably convicts them. 



Even if we were to admit for sake of argument on this score that Special Agent 

 Lembkey's classification of skin weights is correct, as published on page 84, Senate 

 Document No. 376. above cited, even then this London classification declares that at 

 least 6,000 yearlings were killed in the total catch of laet season (1908). They must 

 take these yearlings or have nothing — there is nothing left. That is the fact, and these 

 men are draining the very dregs of that life up there to get the quota you allow them to 

 have. 



Very sincerely, yours, Henry W. Elliott'. 



Mr. Straus however, growing embarrassed over this plain and 

 direct offer of proof of fraud in the Bureau of Fisheries, put up the 

 following evasion of his responsibility in the premises; he issued an 

 executive order transferring the whole business into the hands of 

 the Hon. Geo. M. Bowers, as the directly responsible agent of the 

 Government, to wit: 



December 28, 1908. 



To the Commissioner of Fisheries, the agents charged with the management of the seal 

 ■ in Alaska, and others concerned: 



By virtue of the authority vested in me by the Revised Statutes of the United 

 State--, sections 1973 and 161, and by the organic act creating this department, ap- 

 proved February 14, 1903. it is hereby ordered that, subject to the direction of the 

 head of the department, the Commissioner of Fisheries shall be charged with the 

 general management supervision and control of the execution, enforcement, and 



