INVESTIGATION OF THE FUR-SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 237 



RECAPITULATION OF THE PROOF OF GUILTY KNOWLEDGE OF CHARLES 

 NAGEL IN EE KILLING YEARLING SEALS IN VIOLATION OF LAW 

 AND THE REGULATIONS. 



[See Exhibit III for details.] 



April 26, 1909. — Henry W. Elliott gives Secretary Charles Nagel 

 specific details of the killing of yearling seals by the agents of the 

 Government on the seal islands of Alaska. He urges Nagel to stop 

 it and punish the lessees for this criminal trespass. (See pp. 74, 75, 

 Dixon Hearings, Rothermel letter, May 20, 1911.) 



.May 7, 1909. — Secretary Nagel appoints George A. Clark as a 

 special investigator and sends him to the seal islands to report upon 

 the truth of Elliott's charges in re killing yearling seals. (See pp. 

 819-820, Appendix A, June"24, 1911.) 



September 30, 1909. — George A. Clark reports that Lembkey has 

 killed yearling seals during this season of 1909 and in past see sons. 

 October 8, Nagel receives this report, and on October 9 he turns it over 

 to Lembkey. It is suppressed. (See pp. 850, 851, Appendix A, 

 June 24, 1911.) 



May 9, 1910. — With this proof of the truth of Elliott's charges of 

 April 26, 1909, in his hands, furnished by his own agent, Clark, Nagel 

 to-day again sends Lembkey to the islands to kill seals just as he had 

 done in 1909. Lembkey kills 12,920 seals in June and July, 1910. 

 On April 13, 1912, he confesses to House Committee on Expenditures 

 in the Department of Commerce and Labor that 7,733 of them were 

 yearlings. (See pp. 485, Hearing No. 10.) 



February 4, 1911-May 31, 1911. — Secretary Charles Nagel attends 

 sessions of the United States Senate Committee on Conservation of 

 Natural Resources and of the House Committee on Expenditures in 

 the Department of Commerce and Labor, and his agents admit that 

 Lembkey has again been sent with orders to kill in 1911 just as he 

 had killed in 1910. And they enter a studied and emphatic denial on 

 February 4, 1911, and June 9, 1911, that they have ever killed any 

 yearling seals. (See pp. 82, Hearing No. 20, p. 360, Hearing No. 9, 

 pp. 434-444, Hearing No. 9.) 



December 15, 1911. — The London sales records show that 12,002 

 Pribilof Island fur sealskins were sold to-day, taken last June and 

 July (1911), by Nagel, Bowers, and Lembkey; that 6,247 of these 

 skins were less than 34 inches long and were thus yearling skins. 

 (See pp. 731-733, Hearing No. 12.) 



The guilty knowledge of George M. Bowers, who stated June 9, 

 1911, under oath, that the fur sealskins are classified and sold by 

 weights in London, said statement being a falsehood and made to 

 deceive the committee, and so confessed by his confederate, Chief 

 Special Agent Lembkey April 13, 1912, under oath, to the commit- 

 tee, to wit: 



Mr. Bowers. Mr. Chairman, may I add one word? In Mr. Elliott's statement it 

 appears that "In 1873, early in June, Dr. Mclntyre returned to the seal islands with 

 this classification, by measurement, of his Pribilof skins in London." Those meas- 

 urements are shown in the monograph — measurements and weights — prepared in 

 those days by Mr. Elliott, and in that monograph a yearling skin, a large yearling, 

 if I quote the language correctly, is presumed to weigh A.\ pounds, and he shows the 

 weight each year of the skins from that up to 1\ and 8, or more. I do not know how 

 to tell the age of a sealskin — that is, the exact and correct age to the day or month — ■ 

 any more than a farmer could tell the age of some other fellow's pig if he were not 



