INVESTIGATION" OF THE FUR-SEAL INDUSTRY OE ALASKA. 255 



DR. DAVID STARR JORDAN AND HIS ASSOCIATE " SCIENTISTS " STEJ- 

 NEGER, LUCAS, TOWNSEND, AND EVERMANN CONSPIRE WITH THE 

 LESSEES (LIEBES, ELKINS, AND MILLS) TO CONCEAL THE FACT THAT 

 THIS KILLING ON THE ISLANDS WAS RAPIDLY DESTROYING THE 

 FUR-SEAL HERDS THEREON, AS SAID LESSEES WERE PROSECUTING 

 THAT SLAUGHTER, 1896-1910, INCLUSIVE. 



Dr. Jordan deliberately falsifies the Russian records and the rec- 

 ords of the slaughter by the lessees, 1896-97, to shield those public 

 enemies and enable them to continue their illegal and ruinous work. 

 (Hearing Xo. 2, pp. 65, 66, June 8, 1911, H. Com. Exp. Dept. 

 Com. & Labor.) 



Mr. Elliott. Way back as far as 1826 the Russians themselves recognized the fact 

 that they were culling the herds too closely — that they were ruining the business by 

 the land killing of all the choice males ; they knew that they alone on the islands were 

 to blame, because no such thing as hunting fur seals in the water by white men then 

 was dreamed of, much less done. 



In December, 1820, Gen. Yanovsky, the Imperial Russian agent, sent over to Sitka 

 from St. Petersburg in 1818 to examine into the question of that decline of the fur- 

 seal catch, then wrote to his Government that "so severe is this practice of" culling 

 the best males for slaughter, "that if any of the young breeders are not killed by 

 autumn, they were sure to be killed by the following spring," and urged the reforma- 

 tion of this work then on the islands. 



Here is this evil of overdriving and culling the herd presented and defined 50 years 

 before I saw it and nearly 70 years before Jordan denies its existence in 1898. Think 

 of it. We have sent two investigating commissions since 1890 up to our ruined fur- 

 seal preserves on the Pribilof Islands, one in 1891 and the other in 1896-97, and yet 

 in spite of this plain Russian record and my detailed and unanswerable indictment 

 of that particular abuse in 1890, these commissioners blindly and stupidly deny it. 

 They attempt to set aside the Russian record by saying that the Russians then killed 

 females as well as males and drove them up to the shambles in equal numbers. 



The Russians did nothing of the sort. They began the season early in June by 

 driving from the hauling grounds precisely as we do to-day and continued so to drive 

 all through the rest of the season; they never went upon the rookeries and drove off 

 the females; they never have done so since 1799. How then did the females get 

 into their drives? 



The females fell into these drives of the Russians because that work was protracted 

 through the whole season, from June 1 to December 1. In this way the drivers 

 picked up many cows after August 1 to 10 to the end of November following, since 

 some of these animals during that period leave their places on the breeding grounds 

 and scatter out over large sections of the adjacent hauling grounds, so as to get mixed 

 in here and there with the young males. Thus the Russians in driving across the 

 flanks of the breeding grounds, going from the hauling grounds, during every August, 

 September, October, and November, would sweep up into their drives a certain pro- 

 portion of female seals which are then scattered out from the rookery organization and 

 are ranging at will over those sections of the hauling grounds driven from. What that 

 proportion of this female life so driven was, in Russian time, no man to-day can pre- 

 cisely determine. From the best analysis I can make of it I should say that the 

 Russian female catch in their drives never exceeded 30 per cent of the total number 

 driven at any time, and such times were rare, and that it ranged as low as 5 per cent 

 of female life up to the end of August annually. 



Now, what does Jordan say to-day about this work which the Russians condemned 

 70 years ago and I in 1890? 



"As land killing has always been confined to the males, and as its operations are 

 to-day what they have been since the herd came into the American control, except in 

 so far as they have been improved, this means that land killing is not and has not 

 been a factor in the decline of the herd." 



I went up in 1890 prejudiced against the pelagic sealer. I am yet; but prejudice 

 can not make answer to the following facts: 



In 1890 I found in the place of 3,193,670 breeding fur seals and their young, only 

 959,455. 



In the place of a round million of nonbreeding young male seals on the hauling 

 grounds in 1872-1874, I found a scant 100,000. 



