Excerpt from Proceedings of the Tribunal of Arbitration, Vol. 12: Convened at Paris Under the Treaty Between the United States of America and Great Britain Concluded at Washington February 20, 1892, for the Determination of Questions Between the Two Governments Concerning the Jurisdictional Rights of the United States I

In addition to that, and for the purpose of further insuring the preservation of the herd, the United States Government resorted to national legislation. Laws were passed, the first of them as early as the year 1870, designed to protect the seal and other fur-bearing animals in Bering Sea, and the other possessions recently acquired from Russia. At a later period this statute - with others that had been subsequently passed - was revised, I think in the year 1873, when a general revision of the statutes of the United States was made. They were revised and made more stringent. It was made a criminal offence to kill any female seal; and the taking of any seals at all except in pursuance of the authority of the United States and under such regulations as it might adopt was made a criminal offence. Any vessel engaged in the taking of female seals in the waters of Alaska, according to the phrase used in the statute, was made liable to seizure and confiscation; and in this way it was holied and expected that the fur-seals would be preserved in the future as completely as they had been in the past and that this herd would contmue to be still as pro ductive as before, and if possible made more productive. That system thus initiated by the United States in the year 1870 produced the same result as had followed the regulations established by Russia. The United States Government was enabled even to take a larger draft than Russia had prior to that time made upon the herd. Russia had limited herself at an early period to the taking of somewhere between thirty and forty thousand seals annually, not solely perhaps for the reason that no more could be safely taken from the herd, but also for the reason, as I gather from the evidence, that at that time the demand for seals was not so great as to justify the puttin g of a larger number of skins upon the market.

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