844 INVESTIGATION" OF THE FUR-SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 



No sophistry of the officialism concerned can hide these naked self-confessed facts, 

 as above exhibited and as put into the testimony, duly sworn and certified to this 

 committee. 



From this subject of the leasing system Mr. Nagel proceeds to — 



II. "The Department's Efforts for a Treaty to Suppress Pelagic Sealing." 



The following facts of brief yet sworn testimony declare that the existing fur-seal 

 treaty is the "Hay-Elliott fur-seal treaty plan of mutual concession and joint control," 

 which John Hay, Sir Mortimer Durand (Br. Amb.), the senatorial committee (Gov. 

 W. P. Dillingham, chairman), and Henry W. Elliott perfected March 7-17, 1905, 

 and which treaty plan was held up by the accident of John Hay's sickness in March, 

 1905, and subsequent death July 1, following. That it was forced out of the State 

 Department by the Senate Committee on Conservation of National Resources Febru- 

 ary 4, 1911, after being held up all these long years by interests that Mr. Nagel 'faith- 

 fully served, as well as his immediate predecessors — by the lessees, is a matter of 

 sworn proof given to this committee in detail, and will be found in hearing No. 45, 

 July 11, 1911, pages 165-184. 



On page 62, hearing No. 1, January 17, 1914, I have given to your committee the 

 following indisputable summary, which has been verified by sworn testimony, to wit: 



"This is the Hay-Elliott treaty of mutual concession and joint control with Great 

 Britain, which Henry W. Elliott drew up in 1904-5, and which John Hay approved 

 in March, 1905, and which his sickness and death in July following prevented the 

 ratification of in June, 1905, at Ottawa; the lessees then came into power at the State 

 Department after Hay's death, and, with the help of Dr. Jordan and his 'scientists,' 

 prevented any action on it until it was forced out of the State Department by the 

 Senate Committee on Conservation of National Resources February 4, 1911, and 

 into the Senate February 8, 1911, and then ratified there February 15, 1901, its 

 terms being kept secret until Japan and Russia united in them, July 7, 1911. 



III. "Pelagic Sealing Having Been Abolished, Which Policy Would Best 



Conserve the Seal Herds?" 



Under this caption Mr. Nagel has a long, involved, and indeterminate saying to the 

 end that while he himself did not know anything and could not be expected reason- 

 ably to know anything about seals, yet he had a group of highly specialized fur-seal 

 "experts" under his direction, upon whom he did rely for all he did; that he still 

 believes them wholly competent to advise him and believes they "advised" him 

 "well." 



Were these men "competent"? Did they possess knowledge which he asserts to 

 you they had as "competent experts"? 



Under oath each and every one of these "experts," these "competent" men, 

 denied to this committee that they had any precise or exact knowledge of what 

 Charles Nagel was doing in re killing seals. They declared, each and every one of 

 them, that they did not know of their own personal knowledge whether or no Charles 

 Nagel's agents were killing seals in violation of law or whether they had ever killed 

 "yearling" seals, since not one of them know what a yearling seal was. 



Every one of these "experts" — Smith, Lucas, Bowers, Townsend, Clark, Stejneger, 

 Merriam, and Evermann — every one of them, under oath, swore that they did not 

 know what a yearling sealskin was. 



And the one man — the one "expert" who did know — named by Nagel, W. I. 

 Lembkey, confessed to this committee that in one single season he had taken 7,733 

 yearling sealskins of his own identification and measurement as such. (See hearing 

 No. 14, July 29, 1912, pp. 897-920.) 



IV. "Effort in the Past to Avoid Personal Controversy." 



Under this head Mr. Nagel attempts to conceal the fact that he has written the most 

 brutal, arrogant, and insulting official letter to a good citizen, that the records of high 

 official life can show. He attempts to conceal the fact that he opened this "discus- 

 sion" with that letter, and that he sent up to this committee, June 24, 1911, a series 

 of studied defamatory personal articles all prepared by his subordinates, reflecting 

 upon me, and falsifying my record. They were actually scandalous, and this man 

 Charles Nagel can no more stand up and assert them successfully in the presence of 

 this committee, than he can fly. Over 20 close-printed pages of "this personal drivel, 

 slander, and abominable falsehood are bound up in "Appendix A, " which covers his 

 answer to House resolution 73, Sixty-second Congress, first session, June 28 to July 

 6, 1911 (H. Com. Exp. Dept. Commerce and Labor). This was an "effort" on his 

 part that soon wrought his undoing. 



