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CHAPTER XXIX.
COMMERCE, REVENUE, AND FURS.
1868-1884.
The exports from California to Siberia amounted for
the year ending June 30, 1883, to a very large sum, and were greatly in excess
of the amount for the previous year. The imports for 1883 were valued at $2,887,200,
and never exceeded in any year $3,000,000. There is probably no country in the
world holding commercial relations with which the balance of trade is so
largely in favor of the United States.
The commerce between Alaska and other portions of the
Pacific coast is insignificant, but will probably increase now that congress
has put that territory within pale of the law. As is the case with Siberia,
however, imports are largely in excess of exports.
During the existence of the Russian American Company
it will be remembered that trade became every term more considerable, and
yielded each year a moderate revenue to the imperial government. There is
little doubt that, were any considerable portions of the territory surveyed and
open to preemption, its resources are sufficient, apart from the sealgrounds, to attract capital and population, and hence
to develop traffic. For a year or two after the military occupation there was a
fair amount of commerce, but subsequently for a time the fees and duties of the
entire district about sufficed to pay the salary of a single deputy collector.
The following figures require little comment: For the
six months ending July 1, 1868, the imports on which duty was paid were valued
at more than $26,000; for the twelve months ending March 1, 1878, at $3,295,
the decrease meanwhile being gradual. For the year ending December 31, 1870,
fines, penalties, and forfeitures amounted to nearly $9,000; for the year
ending December 31, 1877, to $10. During 1876 there were no fines, and the
revenue collections for that year amounted to $1,417.81, while the cost of
collecting this sum, apart from the expense of maintaining revenue cutters, was
$11,195. Thus the cost of collection was to receipts about in the ratio of
eight to one. And yet the year 1876 compares very favorably with other years.
In 1872, for instance, excluding fines, the cost of collecting one dollar of
revenue was fifty dollars, and in 1873 sixty dollars. These figures do not, of
course, include the royalty on furseals, or the rent
paid by the Alaska Commercial Company for the lease of the Pribylof Islands.
The total value of domestic exports from Alaska,
excluding peltry, was, for 1880, about $90,000, and will no doubt increase when
the fisheries are more largely utilized. The value of domestic imports depends
partly on the demand at the various mining districts, and especially at the Cassiar district in British Columbia, for which Wrangell is
the distributing point, and is therefore fluctuating. In occasional years it
reaches or exceeds $350,000, and may average about $300,000, the principal
commodities being California flour, tea, coarse sugar, and tobacco. The demand
is about equally divided between eastern and western Alaska, the latter having
imported from San Francisco in 1880 nearly 20,000 barrels of flour.
It is worthy of note that a territory which absorbs
this amount of produce should import so trifling a quantity of duty-paying
goods, and that the cost of collecting the duty on these goods should be three
or four times their value, and at least eight times that of the revenue
collected. Moreover, it is difficult to account for the fact that fines,
penalties, and forfeitures should have decreased from $8,843 in 1870 to $2,921
in 1872, increased to $5,814 the following year, and fallen to nothing in 1876. Hootchenoo distilleries were in full blast, it will
be remembered, almost throughout the military occupation; there is no evidence
that there was less smuggling in 1872 than in 1870; and there is no evidence
that there was less smuggling in 1876 than in 1873. On the contrary, there is
strong evidence that smuggling was steadily on the increase during and after
the military occupation.
The fact that imports of duty-paying goods decreased
from $26,000 for the six months ending July 1, 1868, to about $3,000 for the
year ending March 1, 1878, and that, meanwhile, trade had been so honestly
conducted that there was no longer occasion for fines, penalties, or
forfeitures, is a matter that invites investigation. Apart from the negligence
of officials, to use no stronger phrase, it is certain that powerful factors
have been at work to cause this anomaly, and the main factor is probably the
operations of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
When governor of this corporation, Sir George Simpson
declared that, without the strip of coast leased to it by the Russian American
Company, the interior would be “comparatively useless to England.” It will be
remembered that, by the Anglo-Russian treaty of 1825, the boundary between the
Russian and British possessions was one drawn between the Portland canal and
Mount St Elias, and following the trend of the coast range, or at a distance of
thirty miles from the sea. By the same treaty it was provided that British
subjects should forever enjoy right of navigation on the rivers and streams
which cross this line in their course toward the north Pacific. The latter
clause was repeated in the treaties of commerce and navigation between Russia
and Great Britain in 1843 and 1859.
As the Hudson’s Bay Company surrendered most of its
possessions to the British government in 1869,5 and is now merely a private
trading corporation, there can be no doubt that its pretensions are barred by
the clause in the treaty of 1867, which declares the cession of Alaska to be
free of encumbrance through privileges granted to any association or to any
parties except individual property holders. It is also improbable that its
employes, or other British subjects, will continue to enjoy right of navigation
on the rivers and streams which cross the boundary line.
“In succeeding to the Russian possessions,” remarks
Sumner, “it does not follow that the United States succeed to ancient
obligations assumed by Russia, as if, according to a phrase of the common law,
they ‘are covenants running with the land.’ If these stipulations are in the
nature of servitudes, they depend for their duration on the sovereignty of
Russia, and are personal or national rather than territorial. So at least I am
inclined to believe. But it is hardly profitable to speculate on a point of so
little practicable value. Even if ‘running with the land,’ these servitudes can
be terminated at the expiration of ten years from the last treaty, by a notice,
which equitably the United States may give so as to take effect on the 12th of
January, 1869. Meanwhile, during this brief period, it will be easy by act of
congress in advance to limit importations at Sitka, so that this ‘free port’
shall not be made the channel or doorway by which British goods may be
introduced into the United States free of duty.”
In the customs regulations it is provided that “no
duty shall be levied or collected on the importation of peltries brought into
the territories of the United States, nor on the proper goods and effects, of
whatever nature, of Indians passing or repassing the boundary line aforesaid,
unless the same be goods in bales or other large packages unusual among
Indians, which shall not be considered as goods belonging to Indians, nor be
entitled to the exemption from duty aforesaid.”
When we consider that five or six revenue officers,
hampered with such restrictions, and some of them a thousand miles apart,
collect the customs of a territory whose coast line is more than twice as great
as that of the United States, it is not surprising that the results should be
nugatory. There is probably no better opportunity for smuggling in any part of
the world than amidst the tortuous channels of the Alexander Archipelago and
among the Aleutian Islands. Hundreds of bidarkas laden with blankets, molasses,
sugar, fire-arms, and other commodities purchased from the Hudson’s Bay
Company’s agents, escape the vigilance of the revenue-cutters, or if detected,
the wares are passed off as the “proper goods and effects of Indians.” Among
Indians, blankets are still the principal currency, as they were during the
regime of the Russian American Company. Blankets of Pacific coast manufacture
are sold today to a small extent in England, and to a considerable extent in
the states and territories east of the Rocky Mountains; but so successful has
been this illicit traffic, that a few years ago none but Hudson’s Bay Company
blankets were to be found among the Indians of Alaska.
Of smuggling among white men, two instances may be
mentioned—those of one Charles V. Baranovich, a
trader at Karta Bay, and of the Rev. William Duncan, an Episcopalian missionary
and teacher, magistrate, and trader at Metlahkatlali,
in British Columbia, near the Alaskan border. Baranovich was accused in 1875 of smuggling blankets, hard-bread, and flour. The evidence
was conclusive, but there was no jurisdiction in Alaska, and it was not
considered worth the expense to indict him in the courts of Oregon or
Washington Territory. In the following year, the Rev. W. Duncan was known to
have held complicity with smugglers of blankets, silk goods, fire-arms, and
molasses. Mr Duncan is criticised perhaps a little too severely by William Gouverneur Morris, a late agent of the
treasury department, but it would seem alien to the functions of a missionary
to transgress or to connive at the transgression of the United States revenue
laws. The expense at which the revenue laws have been administered, and the
contempt in which they are held, need no further comment.
Let us now consider the resources of a territory which
contains but a few score of American citizens, and which was declared ‘Indian
country’ by an exattorney-general of the United
States. They consist of furs, fisheries, timber, mines, and as some would have
us believe, agriculture. The last three are as yet but little utilized, and
will be mentioned later. The fur-seal trade, which is at present the most important
industry, is now in the hands of the Alaska Commercial Company, of which I
shall make some mention before proceeding further.
When negotiations for the sale of the Russian possessions
were drawing to a close, a party of San Francisco merchants, among whom was J.
Mora Moss, obtained from Prince Maksutof a promise to
transfer to them all the property of the Russian American Company; but no
contract was signed.
Among those who landed from the John L. Stephens at
the time of the transfer, however, was a merchant named Hutchinson, who
proceeded at once to the castle and made arrangements with the ex-governor to
dispose of a portion of the company’s vessels and other property to the firm of
Hutchinson, Kohl, and Company, on better terms than those offered by Moss and
his colleagues. His offer was accepted. A fur-trader named Boscovitch also purchased about sixteen thousand fur-seal skins at forty cents apiece,
which were shipped to Victoria and sold for two or three dollars each. Other
portions of the company’s assets were disposed of to various parties, most of
them at rates very much below their value.
In 1869 the Alaska Commercial Company was incorporated,
with a capital of $2,000,000. In 1870 a law was passed by congress for the
protection of furbearing animals, and a lease of the Prybilof or Seal islands granted to the company for a term of twenty years. In 1872 the
company purchased the property and interest of Hutchinson, Kohl, & Company.
Apart from the seal islands, the industries of the
territory are open to the public, and for the stations which the company has
established on the Aleutian Islands and on the peninsula north and west of Kadiak,
no special privileges are claimed.
It was estimated by the secretary of the treasury,
before the lease was granted, that the cost of maintaining at the expense of
the United States a revenuecutter and a detachment
of twenty troops, and of paying the salaries of officials, would amount to
$371,200 a year, while a private company could save nearly half that sum.
“The plan I propose,” remarked one of the
stockholders to the chairman of committee oh commerce in the house of
representatives, “asks for no expenditure of money, nor the exercise of any
doubtful or unusual power of the government. On the other hand, it will abolish
the entire expense of the military and naval establishments, which have already
cost the government so much at a time when it could be least afforded; and in
the next place, it will put into the treasury $150,000 per annum net revenue at
a time when it is most needed.”
It must be admitted even by its enemies that the
Alaska Commercial Company has thus far more than fulfilled its promise. Instead
of $150,000 a year, the average revenue between 1870 and 1883 was about
$317,000, and meanwhile the supply of fur-seals increased.
By the act approved July 1, 1870, “to prevent the
extermination of fur-bearing animals in Alaska,” it was provided that fur-seals
should be killed at the Prybilof Islands only during
the months of June, July, September, and October, except such as might be required
for the food and clothing of the natives; that the slaughter should be
restricted to males at least twelve months old; that the number killed each
year for their skins should not exceed 75,000 at St Paul and 25,000 at St
George Island; and that the use of fire-arms or other weapons tending to drive
the seals away should not be permitted. It was estimated by H. W. Elliott, a treasury
agent, from surveys made in 1872-3, that only one eighteenth of the aggregate
supply was contained at the latter island, and that to secure there 25,000
seals within the time allotted would be a difficult task. Through his efforts
the act of 1870 was amended, and the secretary of the treasury authorized to
determine the relative number to be killed at each island from season to
season. The time for killing was also extended to the first half of the month
of August.
According to the terms of its contract, the company
was required to pay a fixed rental of $55,000 a year, a tax of $2.62 on each
fur-seal skin, and 55 cents per gallon on all the seal-oil shipped from the Prybilof Islands; to furnish annually to the natives, free
of charge, 25,000 dried salmon and 60 cords of fire-wood, together with salt
and barrels for preserving seal-meat; and to maintain a school on each island
for at least eight months in the year. As the market value of seal-oil ranged
from 35 to 55 cents per gallon, the company could not save it except at a loss,
and it was allowed to go to waste. Though the tax was afterward abolished in
consideration of a payment to the natives of 10 cents per gallon, the
production of oil was still found to be unprofitable, and shipments have never
been considerable.
In the regulations of the Alaska Commercial Company,
prescribed in January 1872, are certain provisions as to the remuneration and
treatment of the natives, which, together with the obligations of its contract
with government, appear to have been faithfully carried out. The Aleuts are to
be paid forty cents for each skin delivered, and for other labor a sum to be
agreed upon between the company’s agents and the parties employed. The working
parties are to be under control of native chiefs, and no compulsory labor is to
be required. Goods are to be sold at rates not more than twenty-five per cent
above the wholesale price in San Francisco, salmon, fuel, and oil being furnished
gratis. Widows and orphans at either island are to be supported if necessary at
the company’s expense. Medicines and medical attendance are to be provided for
all free of expense. Free transportation and subsistence on the company’s
vessels must be furnished to those who any time wish to remove to any island on
the Aleutian group. Finally, the agents and employes of the company are
strictly enjoined at all times to “treat the inhabitants of the islands with
the utmost kindness, and endeavor to preserve amicable relations with them.
Force is never to be used against them, except in defense of life, or to
prevent the wanton destruction of valuable property. The agents and servants of
the company are expected to instruct the native people in household economy,
and by precept and example illustrate to them the principles and benefits of a
higher civilization.”
The workmen keep a tally of their number of skins, and
at the close of each day’s labor give the result to their chief. When the skins
are afterward counted by the company’s agent at the salt-houses, it is seldom
that any discrepancy is found. Once a month, or sometimes more frequently, the
sum due for the catch is paid to the chiefs, by whom a portion is distributed
among the men, the remainder being reserved until the final settlement, which
takes place at the end of the season. First-class workmen can thus earn, including
extra work, about $4 5021 for three or four months’ labor, and considering that
they are supplied gratis the year round with house-room, fuel, oil, and their
staple article of food, it would seem that their condition is much better than
that of the majority of , laborers in other parts of the world. Not a few of
them save money, though thrift is a rare virtue among the Aleuts, and the company
allows good interest to those who deposit their savings, some having several
thousand dollars to their credit.
Complaints have been made from time to time of the
treatment of natives by the Alaska Commercial Company. Even before its
incorporation the commissioner of Indian affairs lamented that the relations of
Hutchinson, Kohl, & Company with the Aleuts were merely those of traders,
and “in the name of humanity” trusted that the bill which passed the house of
representatives in 1868, and which “would virtually reduce the Indians of
Alaska to a condition of serfdom,” would not become law. What relations other
than those of traders he expected to exist between the Aleuts and Hutchinson,
Kohl, & Company the commissioner does not state. It is certain, however,
that at the Prybilof Islands the treatment of the former
has been in marked and favorable contrast with that which they received
elsewhere during the military occupation or during the regime of the Russian
American Company.
The entire population of the Prybilof Islands numbered, in 1880, nearly four hundred persons, all but eighteen of
them being Aleuts. Until these islands were leased to the Alaska Commercial
Company, most of the natives lived in sod huts, some of them partly under
ground. The fat of seals and a small quantity of drift-wood found on the
northern shore of St Paul Island formed their only fuel, and when these failed,
they passed the remainder of the long drear winter huddled together beneath
seal-skins, in the warmest corner of their dark and noisome dwellings. Nowhere
is in their midst neither poverty, suffering, nor crime, and the villages at St
Paul and St George will compare not unfavorably with those of equal size, even
in the eastern states. The streets are regularly laid out; each family lives in
a comfortable frame dwelling; there are churches and school-houses at both settlements,
and at St Paul a hospital and well furnished dispensary.
The principal food of the natives is salmon and seal
meat, of which five to six hundred pounds a year are required per capita. For
animal food they have no relish. Salt beef and pork they will sometimes accept
as a present, but will never purchase them. Apart from fish, bread, butter,
canned fruit, sugar, and tea form their principal diet. Of bread they consume
about five pounds each per week, of butter and sugar all that they can
purchase, or rather all that the company will allow them to purchase; for if
the supply were unlimited, they would constantly surfeit themselves with both
these luxuries. The samovar, which is now being replaced by the tea-kettle, is
kept boiling at all hours of the day and most hours of the night. When not at
work the Prybilof Islander sips tea even more
persistently than the Chinaman, some of them drinking as much as a gallon a
day. No intoxicating liquors of any kind are openly permitted to come within
their reach, and of tobacco the consumption is moderate.
During the eight or nine months which intervene between
the sealing seasons, the Aleut is little better than a hibernating animal. He
sleeps or slumbers for about eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, and for the
rest he eats, drinks tea, smokes, goes to church, and occasionally gambles.
Sometimes he will work at the grading of roads, or assist in the unloading of
vessels, receiving for his services fifty cents to one dollar a day, but he
does so with an air of supreme condescension, for after receiving his share in
the proceeds of the year’s catch, he has sufficient to support him until the
following season, and is averse to labor of any kind. The holidays of the Greek
church, of which, including Sundays, there are usually three or four each week,
afford some relief from the tedium of winter life. For those who are socially
inclined, there are also birthday parties, and occasionally dance parties, at
which the young pass through the figures taught them by the Russians and set to
Russian music, and the old look on and drink tea.
At St Paul Island we have probably about as contented
a community as can be found elsewhere on the Pacific coast. Strong efforts have
been made from time to time to show that the natives are dissatisfied; but the
dissatisfaction appears to exist only in the minds of those who failed to
procure the privileges granted to the Alaska Commercial Company, or who envy
its privileges. That the company has been guilty of breach of faith in its
relations with the natives or with the government has never yet been proved,
and assuredly its conduct has not lacked investigation.
After a thorough inquiry into the affairs of the
company, the committee of ways and means report to the house of
representatives, in June 1876, that “there is no just ground of complaint
against the Alaska Commercial Company or the officers of the government who
were intrusted under the law with the power to make
and see to the performance of the lease.” The assignment of the lease was also
made the subject of a special investigation.
Before a subcommittee appointed for the purpose of
taking testimony, a large number of witnesses were examined, among whom were
General John F. Miller, president of the company, George S. Boutwell, secretary
of the treasury in 1870, B. H. Bristow, secretary of the treasury in 1876, and
Louis Goldstone, who in 1870 “was trying,” as he testifies, “to obtain a lease from
the government for seal-fishing on the Saint George’s and Saint Paul’s
islands.”
In the fourth section of the act of July 1, 1870, for
the protection of the seal-islands, it is ordered that the secretary of the
treasury shall immediately lease the Prybilof Islands
“to proper and responsible parties, to the best advantage of the United States,
having due regard to the interests of the government, the native inhabitants,
the parties heretofore engaged in the trade, and the protection of the
seal-fisheries, for a term of twenty years from the 1st day of May, 1870.” In
the sixth section it is provided “that the annual rental to be reserved by said
lease shall be not less than fifty thousand dollars per annum, to be secured by
deposit of United States bonds to that amount, and in addition thereto a
revenue tax or duty of two dollars is hereby laid upon each fur-seal skin taken
from said islands during the continuance of such lease.”
On the 8th of July, 1870, an advertisement was
published by order of the secretary of the treasury, stating that bids would be
received for a period of twelve days, and among them was one from Louis
Goldstone, offering to pay, in addition to $55,000 of rental, $2.62o for each
seal-skin and 55 cents for each gallon of seal-oil. Goldstone represented three
parties in California, among whom was the “American Russian Commercial
Company,” which withdrew about the time that the bids were opened, notice to
that effect being immediately sent to Mr Boutwell.
After considering all the proposals, together with the
character, fitness, and financial responsibility of the parties, the secretary
decided that the Alaska Commercial Company best fulfilled the conditions named
in the act, and could give the surest guarantee of a faithful and intelligent
performance of their contract. He therefore awarded to them the lease on the
same terms as were offered by Goldstone, the company agreeing, moreover, to
furnish food and fuel, and to maintain free schools for the use of their native
employes on the Prybilof Islands.
Such, in brief, is the story of this transaction—one
that, like the purchase, is supposed to be deeply shrouded in mystery, but was
in fact a very straight forward, business-like proceeding.
Mr Boutwell, in giving his testimony before the committee, stated that the lease
was assigned by his direction, after such investigation as was thought
necessary on the question of granting to the Alaska Commercial Company the preference.
The matter had been first submitted to the attorney-general, who had also been
asked whether, in his opinion, it was the duty of the secretary to give public
notice of the passage of the bill, and to invite proposals. The reply was that
the company was entitled to preference only so far as the secretary should
consider them to have peculiar facilities for the performance of the contract,
and that the invitation for public bids was a matter that lay very much within
his own discretion. If the terms which the company offered were as favorable to
the government, to the inhabitants of the seal-islands, and to the protection
of the seal-fisheries as those which could be obtained in any other quarter, or
nearly so, “then, under the provisions of the act, they would be entitled to a
preference.”
General Miller testified that the Alaska Commercial
Company offered for the lease as much as any other proper and responsible
party, and in addition, the considerations above mentioned. The proposals were
merely invited by the secretary for his own information, and he had of course
the power to reject any or all of them, as he saw fit. Being asked whether, if
the contract had been let to other parties, they could have fulfilled it
satisfactorily, General Miller replied that it would have been very difficult
for them to do so. They could not have obtained at the islands the use of a
single building, nor any of the appliances needed for carrying on the business,
since all of them belonged to the Alaska Commercial Company, a member of which
had also made contracts with the natives for their labor. To build salt-houses,
boats, dwellinghouses, and procure what else was needed, would require much
time and capital, whereas the company had already on hand everything that was
necessary. Hence they were better fitted to carry on the business than were
other parties.
In addition to the above reasons for granting the
lease to this company, it may be stated that among its stockholders were three
firms, certain of whose members had more experience in fur-sealing and the furseal business than any of the remaining applicants,
their names being Williams, Haven, and Company of New London, John Parrott and
Company of San Francisco, and Hutchinson, Kohl, and Company. These firms
afterward consolidated and formed the nucleus of the present Alaska Commercial
Company, the first of them being the oldest and most successful of all firms
connected with the American fur trade. At the time when the lease was assigned,
this association represented a capital of nine millions of dollars, and owned
no less than fifty trading posts in various parts of Alaska.
As to the bid tendered by Louis Goldstone, it remains
only to be said that, on the withdrawal of the American Russian Commercial
Company, the secretary of the treasury considered it thereby invalidated,
probably not deeming Mr Goldstone and his colleagues
“proper and responsible parties,” “having due regard to the interests of the
government.” Certain it is that the offer made by Goldstone was suspiciously
liberal—more liberal than the law required, though less so than the terms
ultimately proposed by the Alaska Commercial Company. The action taken by the
secretary gave sore offence to Goldstone and his associates, by some of whom a
pamphlet was published, entitled the History of the Wrongs of Alaska, a
memorial being also forwarded to the representatives and referred to committee,
in which it was alleged that the lease had been illegally assigned. The statement
was afterward retracted, as having1 been made under a misapprehension of the
facts, and the memorial withdrawn.
If any other evidence be needed, in addition to the
statements already mentioned, we have the testimony of the Hon. B. H. Bristow,
of which more later, Joseph S. Moore, and other responsible gentlemen, whose
answers before the committee were unanimously in favor of the company. Finally,
we have the report of the members of the committee themselves, who “concur in
the opinion that the lease with the Alaska Commercial Company was made in
pursuance of the law; that it was made in the interest of the United States,
and properly granted to the Alaska Commercial Company; that the interest of the
United States was properly protected in all the requirements of the law; and
that the lessees have faithfully complied with their part of the contract.”
Among the papers submitted to the committee of ways
and means were two communications from Robert Desty of San Francisco. In the
first one, dated February 28, 1876, he cites a number of charges against the
company, which then solicited an investigation, and which he compares to a
“thief who aims to keep himself always ready to be searched, depending on having
the search directed by himself.” He also states that he has delivered to
Senator Jones, of Nevada, certain documents relating to Alaska, to which he
refers the committee. “I am not a trader,” writes Desty, “never was, and never
likely to be, have no interest in Alaska, but for many years I have been a
close student of its affairs, and have contributed some to writing up its
resources, which I believe to be greatly underrated by the company; and
desiring to see an honest administration of the affairs of government, I took
the liberty thus to address you.”
From Desty’s second communication, dated May 1, 1876,
I will give a few extracts, which may serve to explain the History of the
Wrongs of Alaska and the newspaper comments to which it gave rise. “Some time
since I forwarded to you a collection of documents, and a written statement of
the affairs of the Alaska Commercial Company. Since that time I have taken
especial pains to investigate as far as I was able the matters involved
therein, and I have become convinced that most of the charges against the company
are not founded on facts which can be proved.
“Having written nearly all the newspaper articles
which have appeared in the San Francisco papers during the last seven years
against the Alaska Commercial Company, and being the author, in print, of most
of the charges which have been published against that company deem it incumbent
on me to make the following statement. Being a poor man, and a writer, I wrote
upon this subject such things as I was required to write by those who employed
me; and being a radical in politics, of the French school, I was the more
easily deceived, and more readily accepted the statements which charged
oppression and wrongful acts upon the part of this powerful company as true,
and wrote them up with all the vigor and zeal I possessed, induced by my
natural desire to protect the weak against the strong.
“It is well known that there has existed in this city
for several years a combination of individuals, mostly fur-dealers, who singly
and together, under various names, have made common cause against the Alaska
Commercial Company. For a time they took the name of the ‘Alaska Traders’
Protective Association;’ lately they have assumed the name, ‘The Anti-Monopoly
Association of the Pacific Coast.’
“It was in the interest of this combination, as I now
discover, that I was employed to write, and the alleged facts and charges which
I have from time to time written and published against the company were furnished
by one and another of these parties.
“The pamphlet called the History of the Wrongs of
Alaska was mostly composed of statements and charges made by me in the Alaska
Herald and other sources—the articles written by me and published in the Alaska
Herald and other San Francisco papers, and in the New York and Chicago papers.
“The object and purpose of all these various publications
on the part of this combination was to raise a clamor against the Alaska
Commercial Company, and by charging fraud and oppression continually, make the
company so odious to the public that congress would take action towards the
abrogation of its contract of lease for the Seal Islands.
“I now desire to retract all I have written against
the company, and this I do freely and voluntarily, without fear or compulsion
of any sort, but as an act of simple justice.”
Desty’s communications, for whatever they were worth,
were put on file as evidence. Their worth is probably known to those who were
residents of San Francisco when the suit of Thomas Taylor and others versus the
Alaska Commercial Company and others was tried in 1871, and they are mentioned
in these pages merely to explain in part the adverse comments that have
appeared in the press and in various pamphlets.
Perhaps the most valuable testimony educed during the
investigation was that of B. H. Bristow. “I understand you to say,” remarked a
member of the sub-committee, “ that you have instituted all the inquiries that
you deem necessary, but that you have not found anything against the company
that is reliable?” “Yes, sir,” replied the secretary of the treasury, “all that
I thought necessary—indeed, all that I could; for, to speak the plain truth,
when it came to my knowledge that the company was making a very large profit
out of the matter, felt that the government was not getting as much as it ought
to have, and I wanted to find some way of getting a share of the profits for
the government; but I found myself confronted with the law and this contract,
and I saw no reason to believe that the company were not carrying out their
contract in good faith, whatever may be the suspicions by which they are
surrounded.”
The only charge worthy of mention that was brought home
to the Alaska Commercial Company was a discrepancy of $1,467.3740 between the
accounts kept by the custom-house and those of the company; and in the opinion
of the official appointed to examine the company’s books, this was due to an
error of the government agents.
In 1869 the value of a fur-seal skin in London, the
world’s mart for peltry, did not exceed three or four dollars, but at that date
the tax was one dollar per skin. In 1876 a first-class skin delivered in London
cost the company six to six and a half dollars; its market value at that date
before being dressed or dyed was about fifteen dollars, and in 1881 twenty
dollars. The enhanced price is due in part to better preservation, but more to
whim of fashion.
The demand for furs is of course controlled by fashion.
As men wear beaver hats in summer, so do women seal-skin sacks. Among others,
furriers regulate fashion. “When I was in London,” remarks Miller, “I talked
with all the great furriers, and they were delighted to know that they could
calculate with reasonable certainty upon the number of skins that were to be
put upon the market each year. The furriers influence fashion. The value of
this article is subject to the caprice of fashion, but the furriers themselves
aid in making the fashions, and they make the fashion for an article that will
pay.”
Among the charges brought against the Alaska
Commercial Company was that of taking more than the number of skins allowed by
law. It is unnecessary to discuss this charge. As a fact, they usually take one
or two hundred less than the number prescribed, and not until 1881 did the
number of accepted skins amount to a hundred thousand. “If we overran the market
to any appreciable extent,” stated Miller, in evidence, “it would certainly
knock the price down, and it would do it because it disturbs the present
equilibrium.”
At the Prybilof Islands the
government has what may be termed a stock-farm, which yields an income of more
than $300,000 a year. The advantages of leasing these islands to responsible
parties are thus stated by Henry W. Elliott, formerly a treasury agent, who
inspected the seal-grounds in 1876:
“First. When the government took possession of these
interests, in 1868 and 1869, the gross value of a seal-skin laid down in the
best market, at London, was less in some instances, and in others but slightly
above, the present tax and royalty paid upon it by the Alaska Commercial
Company.
“Second. Through the action of the intelligent
business men who took the contract from the government, in stimulating and
encouraging the dressers of the raw material, and in taking sedulous care that
nothing but good skins should leave the islands, and in combination with
leaders of fashion abroad, the demand for the fur, by this manipulation and
management, has been wonderfully increased.
“Third. As matters now stand, the greatest and best
interests of the lessees are identical with those of the government; what
injures one injures the other. In other words, both strive to guard against
anything that shall interfere with the preservation of the seallife in its original integrity, and both having it to their interest if possible to
increase that life; if the lessees had it in their power, which they certainly
have not, to ruin these interests by a few seasons of rapacity, they are so
bonded and so environed that prudence prevents it.
“Fourth. The frequent changes in the office of the
secretary of the treasury, who has very properly the absolute control of the
business as it stands, do not permit upon his part of that close, careful
scrutiny which is exercised by the lessees, who, unlike him, have but their one
purpose to carry out. The character of the leading men among them is enough to
assure the public that the business is in responsible hands, and in the care of
persons who will use every effort for its preservation and its perpetuation. As
matters are now conducted, there is no room for any scandal—not one single
transaction on the islands but what is as clear to investigation and
accountability as the light of the noon-day sun; what is done is known to
everybody, and the tax now laid by the government upon and paid into the
treasury every year by the Alaska Commercial Company yields alone a handsome
rate of interest on the entire purchase money expended for the ownership of
all Alaska.”
It is probable that the lease of the Prybilof Islands has been a much more profitable
transaction, both for the government and the Alaska Commercial Company, than
was anticipated at the time when it was signed. In 1871 Hutehinson,
Kohl, & Company obtained a lease of Bering, Copper, and Robben islands on
very much more favorable terms. The rental was but five thousand roubles in silver, and the royalty two roubles.
The minimum number of skins that should be taken was fixed at one thousand, but
otherwise there was no limit.
In many parts of Alaska there were, in the time of the
Russian American Company, as the reader will remember, seal-grounds of great
value, but where today the catch is inconsiderable. In the south Pacific there
were, less than fifty years ago, rookeries frequented by millions of seals, and
which now yield but five to ten thousand skins a year. That the same fate would
have overtaken the Prybilof Islands, but for the
intervention of congress; that, instead of the five millions of fur-seals which
at present make these islands their summer resort, there would have been but a
few thousands, cannot reasonably be doubted. They return each year only because
they are not allowed to be disturbed by the sound of fire-arms or by other
means, much care and method being used during the slaughtering season.
When they come in from the north Pacific in early
summer, the seals usually select their landing-places on the south and
south-eastern shores of the Prybilof Islands, mainly,
as is supposed, because the winds, blowing at that season usually from the
north and west, carry out to sea the scent of their old rookeries. During the
month of May only a few hundreds of full-grown males are to be seen on the
grounds, but about the first week in June, when banks of gray fog begin to
enshroud the islands, the males swarm in daily by thousands, and choose
locations for their harems close to high-water mark.
Toward the end of the month the females arrive, and
meanwhile a constant fight has been going on between the new-comers and those
already in the field, during which the latter, exhausted by repeated conflicts,
are often driven higher up the rookery and away from the water-line. The
contests are only among the full-grown males, which dispute in single combat
the choicest spots; and veterans have been known to fight thirty or forty
pitched battles in order to maintain their ground until the arrival of the
females, when it seems to be understood that those who have held their own
shall not be disturbed for the season.
The combatants approach warily and with averted gaze.
When at close quarters they make feints or passes like pugilists in the ring,
their heads darting in and out and their eyes gleaming with a lurid light.
After much preliminary roaring and writhing, they seize each other with their
long canine teeth, and when the grip is relaxed, the skin and blubber of one or
both are scarred with furrows, the blood streaming down meanwhile, and the
conflict being perhaps the most singular that man can witness.
“Thus,” as Elliott remarks, “about two thirds of all
the males which are born, and they are equal in numbers to the females born,
are never permitted by the remaining third, strongest by natural selection, to
land upon the same breeding-ground with the females, which always herd
thereupon en masse. Hence, the great band of bachelor
seals, or holluschickie, so fitly termed, when it
visits the island is obliged to live apart entirely, sometimes, and in some
places, miles away from the rookeries; and in this admirably perfect method of
nature are those seals which can be properly killed without injury to the
rookeries selected and held aside, so that the natives can visit and take them
without disturbing, in the least degree, the entire quiet of the
breeding-grounds, where the stock is perpetuated.”
To the bachelor seals remains the choice of taking up
their abode—in technical phrase, ‘hauling up’—in rear of the rookeries, or on
what are termed the free beaches. For the former purpose a path is left through
the married-quarters by which they pass in ceaseless files, day or night, at
will. No well conducted holluschick is molested on
the way, but woe to him that keeps not straight on his path, or looks askant
and sniffs in the neighborhood of a harem. Loss of flipper or of life is the
sure penalty.
During the early part of the season, the bachelor
seals that select as their ground the free beaches haul up within a few rods
of high-water mark, and to effect their capture great caution is required. At
the first glimpse of dawn, a party of natives is sent to the spot whence the
seals are to be driven to the slaughtering-ground, and while their victims are
still dozing, creep stealthily between them and the surf. When roused, they
find themselves cut off from retreat to the sea, and crawl or lope in the
direction in which they are guided by the Aleuts, who, brandishing their clubs,
but as noiselessly as possible, walk slowly on the flank and in rear of the
drove. In this manner, under favorable circumstances, several thousand
fur-seals may be driven by a dozen men, but usually only a few hundred are
taken at a time.
From the hauling-grounds to the killing-grounds the
seals are driven at the rate of about half a mile an hour, with frequent halts
to allow time to cool, as heating injures the quality of the fur. During the
‘drive,’ as it is termed, they never show fight, unless it should happen that a
few veterans are among the drove. When the men think it time to halt, they drop
back a few paces, whereupon the holluschickie stop,
and pant, and fan themselves. The clattering of a few bones or a shout from
their drivers causes them instantly to resume their march to the slaughtering-grounds.
About seven o’clock the seals are secured in the
slaughtering corral, which is always close to one of the Alaska Commercial
Company’s villages. Here they are allowed to cool until the men have
breakfasted, after which all the Aleuts come forth, armed with bludgeons,
clubs, and stabbing and skinning knives. At a given signal the men step into
the corral, from which a hundred or a hundred and fifty are driven at a time,
and surrounded, the circle narrowing until the seals are huddled together and
within reach of the clubs. The chief then selects those which are doomed, and a
single blow of the club, which will stun and not kill, is dealt to all. If the
day happen to be warm and fair, the skin will spoil, unless removed, sometimes
within half an hour, and always within an hour and a half after the death of
the seal. To avoid waste, therefore, and to allow those whose furs have been
injured during the harem fights a chance to escape, the fatal blow is not
struck until later, when a single well aimed stroke of the bludgeon crushes in
the slender bones of the victim’s skull and stretcheshimlifeless.
The skins are taken to the salt-house, where they are
carefully examined, and those which are damaged, the number seldom exceeding
one per cent, are rejected. They are then salted on the fleshy side, and, in
sealing phrase, piled, fat to fat, in ‘kenches,’ after which salt is thrown on
the outer edges and kept in place by sliding planks. In two or three weeks they
are pickled, when they are taken, as required, rolled into bundles of two, with
the fur outward, and are tightly corded. They are then ready for shipment to
San Francisco, where they are counted by the government agent and thence
forwarded to London in casks containing each forty to eighty skins.
The method of dressing and dyeing the skins is a trade
secret, and for some reason this branch of industry appears to he almost
concentrated in London. Although artisans have been engaged, and dye-stuffs and
even water imported from England by the French, furs prepared by artisans of
the latter nation are not considered equal to those prepared in London. The processes
previous to that of dyeing, wherein the secret lies, are very simple. In order
to rid it of greasy particles, the skin is first soaked in warm water, and
after being scraped clean, again soaked in warm water containing rose-wood or
mahogany sawdust. The fleshy side of the skin is then shaved, in order to cut
off the roots of the coarser hairs, which fall out, leaving only the soft fur,
which is then ready for the dyeing process.
Whatever has been or may be alleged against the Alaska
Commercial Company, it cannot be said with truth that it has diminished the
world’s wealth. During the first term of the Russian American Company’s
existence, the entire catch of fur-seals at the Pribylof Islands was estimated
at a little over 1,000,000, duing the second term at
less than 460,000, and during the third term at about 340,000, each term
extending over about twenty years, and almost each year showing a diminution in
the supply. The waste of skins caused through fault of curing has already been
mentioned. In 1868 the slaughter exceeded 240,000, and, as we have seen, the
rookeries were threatened with extermination. In 1883 about 100,000 were
killed; their value was greatly enhanced, and during the portion of the
company’s lease that had then expired the supply was gradually on the increase.
The catch of sea-otter now averages 5,000 to 6,000 a
year, or more than double the number secured before the purchase; and their
skins are worth in London from $75 to $100. This industry furnishes profitable
employment for a few months in the year to several thousand Aleuts, the skin
being the most valuable of all peltry, excepting perhaps the pelt of the black
fox.
Silver-gray and black fox-skins were first introduced
to fashion, it will be remembered, at St Petersburg.6Of either the catch is
inconsiderable, that of the silver fox seldom exceeding one hundred, while the
appearance of a black fox-skin in the market is of very rare occurrence. Blue
fox-skins are taken to the number of about 2,000. The red fox has little
commercial value. Of marten and beaver skins considerable shipments are made;
but of these, as of other land peltry, the principal supply comes from the
Hudson’s Bay Company.
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