INVESTIGATION" OF THE FUK-SEAL INDUSTKY OP ALASKA. 307 



sonably construed and does not mean that the lessee shall be entirely deprived of 

 taking seals. 



It has been suggested that pending arbitration if England should stop the Canadian 

 poachers from taking seals in the Bering Sea that the United States should agree to 

 suspend the taking of seals on land. It is not clear what right England has to make 

 any demand upon the United States to stop taking animals on its own soil. But it 

 is submitted on behalf of the company that the United States has leased the exclu- 

 sive right to take seals on the Pribilof group of islands, and the controversy between 

 the two countries presents itself with the lease in existence and the obligations of 

 the United States to the lessee in full force. The lease stands as part of the condition 

 of affairs that can not be changed, and while the United States can not terminate the 

 lease except for cause, it should not be asked that it be done pending arbitration or 

 as a preliminary to a fair settlement. 



The interests of the Government and lessee are the same and not in any sense 

 antagonistic and should not be made so. The lessee is as much interested in pre- 

 serving seal life as the Government, and whenever it is shown to be in the interest 

 of preserving seal life it will willingly consent to a reasonable suspension of killing 

 seals on the islands. But the company feels that, with the present light on the sub- 

 ject it would be unfair both to the Government and to it to suspend taking seals for 

 this year. The company, in obedience to the terms of the lease and by way of prep- 

 aration for this year's work, has already incurred and is still incurring heavy expenses. 

 Respectfully, 



(Signed) North American Commercial Co., 



By Ogden Mills. 



Every paragraph in that letter < f Ogden Mills is false; he signs it 

 f r the lessees, D. O. Mills, Lloyd Tevis, Herman and Isaac Liebes, 

 and S. B. Elkins (s?on to be Harrison's Secretary of War, and then 

 after, in 1894, Senator from West Virginia). The absolute untruth 

 and fraud of its c -nceptim is fully bared by the sworn testimony in 

 Hearing No. 10, pages 662-668/ April 24, 1912. (H. Com. Exp. 

 Dent. C. and L.). 



Think of the strange stupidity of the following brazen untruth — 

 of that untruth which bristles all thrcugh every paragraph in this 

 venal letter, to wit: 



Secretary Windom regarded the failure to take 60,000 seals as a mistake, and one 

 he wished he could repair. Considering this, and for other reasons, he said to the 

 attorney of the N. A. C. Co., early in February, that it was his purpose to allow the 

 company to take 60,000 this year, and 100,000 in the discretion of the Treasury agent, 

 if the seals appeared on the islands. 



William Windom dropped dead into his chair, on the evening of 

 January 29, 1891, at the banquet of the New York Chamber of 

 Commerce, in that city. 



Yet this falsifier who pens the above tells us that "early in Feb- 

 ruary" following, Windom intended to reverse his own sworn agents 

 and let these public enemies have full swing at the public property 

 then in dire jeopardy on the Seal Islands of Alaska. 



William Windom in the presence of Henry W. Elliott, at the resi- 

 dence of James G. Blaine, in Washington, January 6, 1891, agreed with 

 Mr. Blaine to a total suspension of the lessees work for five years 

 from date, if the British Government would compel the prohibition 

 of pelagic sealing in Bering .Sea and the North Pacific for the same 

 length of time from date. 



This letter of Ogden Mills urging Foster to set aside the unanimous 

 testimony of his own sworn agents, and let the lessees have full 

 sweep at the public preserves on the Seal Islands of Alaska was 

 carefully planned and prepared with the full knowledge of D. O. 

 Mills, of Lloyd Tevis, of S. B. Elkins, of Isaac and Herman Liebes, 



