Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/478

472 and nursing females have been taken from the breeding stock of the herd. The skins of these animals have been marketed by the pelagic sealers at an average price of $15 per skin, a total loss in cash to the government of $3,000,000, with an actual loss through breeding possibilities of ten times this amount, as the breeding life of the female fur seal is at least ten seasons.

There is abundant ground here for legitimate criticism of our governmental policy in dealing with this valuable industry. There is no occasion to invent grounds of criticism such as those urged against the Secretary of Commerce and Labor for a harmless detail of administration. The responsibility does not, however, rest entirely with the United States. The fur seal question is an international issue. The flags of Japan and Great Britain protect the destructive and suicidal industry of pelagic sealing—an industry which is also on the verge of bankruptcy as a result of the failure of the herd, for it preys on its own capital. Russia also owns an important fur seal herd which has suffered and is suffering in exactly the same way that the herd of the United States has suffered and is suffering. It is the business of these two nations—owners of fur seal herds—to effect an understanding with the two nations which stand sponsor for the pelagic industry to the end that the wasteful slaughter may cease.

Surely the abolition of pelagic sealing, which means the hunting of gravid and nursing female fur seals—exactly analogous to the hunting of the gravid doe or the brooding quail—is a cause which should appeal to and enlist the support of the sportsmen of the Camp Fire Club and all lovers of animals the world over. Every influence of criticism and assistance that can be brought to bear should be directed toward the four great nations—the United States, Great Britain, Russia and Japan—having responsibility for this matter, to the end that this valuable race of animals, the fur seals of Bering Sea, shall be saved to the world.