INVESTIGATION OF THE FUR-SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 491 



The Chairman. That was in 1896-97 ? 



Mr. Clark. It was in 1896-97 that that was determined, and I 

 want to refer you to page 243 of the first volume of the report of the 

 commission of that year to find this joint British and American 

 agreement. 



The Chairman. Then with all of these recommendations coming 

 from the commission it was allowed to go on for about 14 years 

 more without enacting a treaty ? 



Mr. Clark. That is what I want to call attention to here. It 

 took 12 years and cost the herd 200,000 breeding females and the 

 Government approximately $4,500,000 worth of sealskins. That is 

 what the pelagic sealers got for them. 



The Chairman. How much damage did it do by reason of destroy- 

 ing the equilibrium of the herd, if I may put it in that way ? 



Mr. Clark. This loss was of breeding stock, of breeding females 

 with their young. Each of these animals brought $15 in London as 

 a sealskin, but the animals were worth five times that much as 

 breeders, because each breeding female would produce that many 

 pups. 



The American commission of 1896-97 made one strong recommen- 

 dation — that a superintendent naturalist be put in charge of the herd 

 to make its problems his fife study. The recommendation was 

 ignored until 1909, when provision was made for a naturalist. Acci- 

 dents prevented filling this place permanently until last summer, 

 when Mr. F. M. Chamberlain was sent up with me, it being the 

 expectation that he would continue the future study and care of the 

 herd. But the press dispatches recently announced, and I find it 

 confirmed in the most recent publication of this committee, that for 

 economy's sake and because of wrong mental attitude the office of 

 naturalist has been abolished by the Department of Commerce and 

 with it the chief of the Alaskan Fisheries Division. That is equiva- 

 lent to knocking the brains out of the personnel of the fur-seal service. 

 I do not know what the salaries are, but I suppose the salaries of 

 these two men can not exceed $10,000. Two hundred of the seal- 

 skins allowed to go to waste last summer would have supplied this 

 item of cost, and the minimum of 5,000 skins, which is a reasonable 

 interpretation of a food killing, would have yielded sufficient funds 

 to meet the expense of the entire Alaskan division, including the fur- 

 seal islands. After all the loss and waste that has been endured in 

 the past through lack of trustworthy knowledge we are now to go 

 back to the old policy of letting the herd care for itself and turning 

 its interests over to new and untried men. The Sixty-second Congress, 

 in connection with one of the appropriation bills, had already dis- 

 charged the full force of experienced and trained agents, and the 

 islands are now in the hands of inexperienced caretakers and not in 

 the hands of trained men. 



Nineteenth important work that should be done : In order that the 

 progress of the herd toward rehabilitation may be noted and meas- 

 ured, it is important that certain work of investigation begun in 1912 

 be carried forward. 



The breeding families on all the rockeries have in the season of 

 1912 and 1913 been accurately counted and plotted on the Coast and 

 Geodetic Survey map of 1897. I would like to pass this atlas around 



