stefansson-wrangel-09-06-131-001

Jennings

August 30th, 1921.

Dear George:

This is with reference to our conversation when I was about to
take the train in Missoula.

The Stefansson Exploration and Development Company, Ltd., is
incorporated with an authorized capital of $100,000., under the laws of the
Provinces of British Columbia. The Company has through the act of incorpor-
ation varied powers which enable it to engage in almost any kind of business
activity. From the business point of view, our present purpose is to secure
a fifty years' lease of one of the islands to the north of Canada. After
the lease is secured we expect to stock this island with reindeer.

I have already promoted successfully a similar company, known as
the Hudson’s Bay Reindeer Company, with offices at 205 Main street, Winnipeg.
That company is being financed entirely by the old Hudson’s Bay Company.
We are spending about half a million dollars this year in bringing the rein-
deer from Norway into Baffin Island. All of us who are concerned take the
success of that enterprise as a foregone conclusion, a thing which hs shown
best by the fact that the Hudson’s Bay Company have refused to allow me to
buy any more shares in the Hudson's Bay Reindeer Company than the number
I was entitled to buy at per by my original agreement with them. While
that company, we all feel sure, will certainly become a success, I shall
unfortunately profit very little by it because my own lack of capital com-
pelled me to surrender most of the material advantages to the Hudson’s
Bay Company. One of the reasons for the incorporation of the Stefansson
Exploration and Development Company, Ltd., was that I wanted to develop
the same idea in another part of Canada in such a way that I myself and
possibly my friends might secure a large part of the profit instead of
having it go to a company already rich, as in the case of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

One of the things I have made up my mind to is that I want to
keep control personally of the stock of the Stefansson Exploration and
Development Company. In other words, the total amount of money which we
will allow to be put into the company by others than myself will never be
more than forty-nine per cent of the total capitalization. There are
several reasons for this, but one is that if the Board of Directors gets
into the hands of men not thoroughly familiar with the climate and resources
of the North, they are liable to embark on a policy which, no matter how
sensible for places like California or even Montana, might not do at all
up there. Ahother reason is that I never want to ask anyone to take the
major share of the risk and, as the stockholders in this |company will be
chiefly friends of mine, I want to put in more than a dollar of my own money