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9. The establishment of training ships in our ports so that seamen may be better trained in such things as lifeboat drill and familiarizing themselves with new and modern equipment.

10. From the standpoint of personnel what do you consider the most constructive operation to advance our position in the maritime world?

I will appreciate getting your views on the above subjects sometime within the next week.

Sincerely yours,

TURNER W. BATTLE, Executive Assistant to the Secretary.

DECEMBER 18, 1934.

Hon. TURNER W. BATTLE,

Executive Assistant to the Secretary,

Department of Labor,

Washington, D. C.

DEAR SIR: Yours of the 15th instant was received by me on Sunday. You have listed 10 separate questions, some of which I will have to take together in order to make my answers as short and yet as understandable as possible for me. The purpose of the United States is to develop sea power. Sea power is skilled man-power. Ships are the tools used by seamen in peace and war. The tools ultimately belong to races or nations that know how to use them. The United States has the mechanics and the wealth and other resources needed for the building of all ships required or desired. What it has needed in the past-what it needs now and may always need is the necessary number of native or naturalized seamen not only for all the purposes in peace and war, but to replace them. The really important question is, therefore, skilled men-how to get the American boy to sea and how to keep the American man at work in the calling. I shall, therefore, first take up questions 10 and 9.

The vast majority of the population of the United States are of Nordic origin. It is this racial element that has dominated the sea for nearly 3,000 years, because this racial element settling in Great Britain and Spain at first made Spain the sea power and then transferred the power to Great Britain. There are no real obstacles in getting the American boy to sea. Let legislation be so framed that the boy in going to sea before the mast, where they all ought to begin, does not lose his social standing by so doing. The real American boy will not go into a discredited calling. His own self-respect must be preserved and the respect for seamen and seamanship in the community from which he comes must be restored. When he arrives at the ripe manhood age his earnings must be such that he can marry and provide for a wife and a couple of children. He should receive as much at least as that of a second-class mechanic.

In Great Britain, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Japan the merchant marine is largely fed by the fisheries and the navy from the merchant marine and the fisheries. In the contests between Great Britain and France, France could not reman her navy once-Great Britain could reman her navy five or six times. (Mahan's Sea Power in History.) In the United States we have practically no native deep-sea fishermen and there is no better place for the training of seamen than decked ocean-going fishing vessels. Man is not by nature a seaman. The sea, the vessel, the life is so distinct from man's natural mode of life that it has always taken years of training to make a seaman. His thoughts and feelings need the training as absolutely as does his body. Nearly all real seamen began the life in early youth. It was always one step at a time from boy to master. The sea has not changed. Human nature has not altered very materially. The training is as much needed as it ever was. Seamen are not made on shore. They are not taught in a correspondence school. As no man became a swimmer except by going into the water so no man, whatever his ancestry, becomes a seaman except at sea.

In order to get the method by which seamen have through the ages been developed, I would request you to read, The Boy; Ordinary Seaman; Able Seaman; Officer; and The Engine Department in the pamphlet Second Message to Seamen, pages 4, 5, 6, and 7. Here you have the historical review of the training of seamen. It leaves no room for the high school or college failure or for the boy or young fellow who for one reason or another could not hold a job on shore. If you want seamen, you must create them. The merchant marineof the United States are feeding the fisheries. The seamen are leaving the sea. service for the work of stevedoring in the seaports-to become painters, riggers, and structural iron workers on shore. The development is from boy to able seaman-from able seaman to officer and out of 3,600 men yearly employed on

the Pacific between 1901 and 1921 about 600 a year left the sea to become officers or to go into other callings and the condition on the Pacific at that time was notoriously the best in the world. That this condition in the United States was thoroughly understood by experts is testified to by the fact that an expert prepared a memorandum for the German Emporer in which he stated that the sea power of the future would come to Germany-that England and Japan would have to quit building for want of money and the United States for want of men. Question 9 asks about the establishment of training ships in our ports. The only thing that training ships ever really did was to teach men to keep away from the sea. In my more than 60 years of experience on ships and on shore, associating almost exclusively with seamen, I have found very few on the ships either as men before the mast or as officers who began on a training ship. They are usually found in the different positions on shore that are recognized as requiring some sea training for their occupation.

Question 8 deals with the establishment of a national merchant marine academy to train officers. Officers for the sea cannot be trained in that way. The skill in seamanship is obtained at sea only. Usually 1 year as a boy, 2 years or more as an ordinary seaman in which time he must learn to know the ship, her gear and her equipment and her boats, etc. As this time he learns how to find the gearwhat to do with it and how to adjust or repair it in daylight or at dark. It takes usually 4 years to be a practical able seaman. A boy with an ordinary school education and sufficient native intelligence will learn astronomical seamanship ir 4 weeks. Merchant marine academies are a waste of time, of energy and of money. Let the boy come to the sea when he is 16, 17, or 18 years old-go into the forecastle where, if he desires to, he will find men to teach him when he is working with them to repair the ship's gear and give him other practical know!edge absolutely necessary that is of a more uncommon order. Seamanship includes of necessity the rigging and handling of cargo gear and the stowing of cargo. This cannot be sufficiently learned anywhere except on board a ship, and one of the principal duties of the first mate is to see to the stowage of the cargo, which cannot be learned except by practical experience. Practically all foremen and superintendents employed by stevedoring companies have learned their business at sea. A vessel improperly stowed is unseaworthy. (Illustrated in the case of the Vestris and innumerable others.)

But in addition to this such establishments for the training of officers introduces an utterly un-American system in shipping. Men will come to such academies from better homes. The officers will be developed from a separate class from that of the men before the masts. It will close the road of promotion to the young fellow who comes on board of a vessel as a boy. Nothing can prevent the American boy from learning that fact, and the result is inevitable-that he will not seek the sea as a livelihood. American sea power must arise from the average boy of the working class who is facing a life of physical labor. If he be ambitious and capable, he will find his way in promotion from able seaman to officer and from officer to master or from fireman, oiler, or water-tender to assistant engineer and finally chief. This gradual development runs through all departments of the ship. There can be no efficient seamanship unless it does, and there can certainly be no national development of sea power without it.

Question 7 deals with the question of employment. The young fellow might easily and very properly be obtained through the several branches of the United States Employment Service. They must be of such physical development and health as would make them acceptable for the Navy, and no boy should be permitted to go to sea unless he has been properly examined first. Employment on the ships should be through the shipping commissioners' offices through which all employment of seamen except those employed on ferries and car ferries should be made. A proper individual record should be kept of all men shipped and discharged so that the United States might know where the man has sailed-in what rating he has sailed and how long he has served. Reports should be made of seamen from the shipping commissioners' offices to a recorder. No shipping should be permitted at all except through such offices where the master of a vessel, or any officer of his ship whom he chooses to send, should come for the selection of the men. This is the method through which seamen have been encouraged to become skillful, capable, willing, and well behaved. It puts & premium on skill and good reputation which is utterly destroyed by such offices as the Sea Service Bureau, the Rota system or any other method which deprives the officer and master from originally selecting the men which in his judgment will be the best men for him to employ, since he is the man to see that the work is done. Private shipping offices operated by corporations or employed by corporations and shipowners destroy this very essential element in the develop

ment of skill and behavior. Besides, such offices become the very stink in the nostrils of real seamen because he has to step aside for a salt-water impostor that knows how to use illegal and improper means to get employment. No private shipping office, whether kept by owners, unions, or individuals, has ever been able to keep itself honest and clean. Nothing but the direct selection by the man who has to have the work done has ever tended to the development of the right kind of men. The passing of the shipping bill in 1872 was to obtain this end. The crimps and the ship owners fought it and having a very large control over the seamen they made the seamen do the same.

Questions 6 and 5 deal with improvement in working conditions. The stewards' department on board a ship has a stint to do. It must be done every day or the owner will be showered with complaints and passengers will fall off in number. Travelers will seek other ships. They should be given an 8-hour day at sea and should be of sufficient number to do the work properly in the proper working time. Any overtime for them at sea leads to corruption. The engine department has a specific stint to do each day. They should be divided strictly into three watches giving 8 hours of actual working time to the ship at sea. Generally speaking, their meals should be served on their own time. They must be of sufficient number and skill for the upkeep of all the gear and machinery in that department. Overtime at sea should not be allowed because it leads to corruption. Accidents will happen and unless the men in that department from the chief engineer down have the proper skill the vessel may have tow bills to pay which will absorb 1 or 2 years' earnings. The work of the deck department is of a slightly different order. Much of the work that cannot be done today can be done tomorrow or the next day. They must be of sufficient skill for the upkeep of the ship from master down to ordinary seaman. The boy is there purely to learn, and, in order that all may learn and know as much as possible, the repair work should be done on the ship, including such as awnings, windbreaks, tar pullings, and other necessary things made of canvas, as well as cargo slings of all kinds except such as are made of wire. The handling of wire will be sufficiently known without making those things. The men in the deck department should stand in strictly three watches with the possible exceptions of the carpenter, boatswain, and storekeeper. Overtime at sea should not be allowed because it leads to corruption. The watchmen should be kept strictly to their duty. The watch should be on deck and immediately available especially in low visibility and in any emergencies that may arise, and for the purpose of lookout, in which ears are as nearly as important as eyes. No rating less than an ordinary scaman should be permitted on the lookout, except for learning purposes. No one should be permitted at the wheel but able seamen, except for learning purposes.

Question 3 deals with continuous service certificates similar to the British. These kind of certificates are of great value and should be provided, but the master's right and duty to express his opinion upon the man's ability and conduct should not be permitted on such certificates. If he is not of the required ability to do the work for which he has signed, he should be disrated according to his demerit. If, in the person's judgment, he is improperly disrated, he has a right now to appeal to the courts. With reference to his behavior, the law dealing with discipline is sufficient. If he is discharged from the ship without any comment, that is all the recommendation needed. The master's right to express his opinon of the man's ability and conduct on the discharge has been misused. It is no longer held in any great favor even in Great Britain. In all other countries it has been abolished by the recommendation and treaties proposed by the International Labor Section of the League of Nations at Geneva. The continuous discharge book will show how long he has sailed--at what ratings he has sailed and at what rating he was hired in the last shipment. This is all that is needed. The recommendations give room for blacklisting by permitting the recording of personal likes and dislikes. I have seen hundreds of discharges in which the man was marked very good and when I examined him in seamenship for the pur pose of enrolling him into the union, I found that he was not a seaman at all. Questions 1, 2, and 4 deal with subsidies, control of dividends and the control of ports. These questions were thoroughly discussed during the 21 years struggle to pass the Seamen's Act. The purpose of this act was to develop national sea power for the United States-to induce the American boy to seek the sea as a livelihood and to keep the grown American at sea in the calling. In the pamphlet Message to Seamen (copy of which is enclosed) you will find the Seamen's Appeal to the World (p. 8)—A Memorial to Congress (p. 9) and The Decay of Seamanship in Europe and America (p. 11). These three were the main documents leading to the passage of the Seamen's Act. It was recognized that there

was a considerable wage differential in foreign and American ships running from 5 to 50 percent-that in order to improve the seamen's condition so as to get the American boy to sea and keep the American man there, there must be serious improvements in the maritine laws of the United States and these improvements could not be made without so increasing the cost of operation that the United States would in substance legislate itself off the ocean.

The promoters and friends of the legislation believed that by using the sovereignty of our ports and imposing upon foreign vessels coming into those ports the same laws that we imposed upon the American shipowners and seamen, the wages would be equalized. Investigation had proven that the only distinction in cost of operating the vessels was the difference in wage costs. Port charges were the same to all nations in the same harbor-stevedoring charges were the same-supplies and fuel were bought where they could be bought the cheapest, so that the only distinction in the actual operation of ships was the wage distinction. By liberating the seamen, placing them under the benefit of the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution, and by repealing the then-existing treaties about the arrest, detention, and return of deserting seamen, the wages of seamen going from and to the United States, and ultimately in the world, would be the same. That this contention was right was conclusively proven by the report from Mr. Robert P. Bass, Director Marine and Dock Industrial Relations, United States Shipping Board, 1919. This report contains material of immense value in dealing with the question of seamen and the different services connected with vessels. You will find in it the wage rates of the different nations. You will find that while the Seamen's Act was enforced as it was intended to be enforced, it resulted in the foreign vessels paying the same wages as the American vessels did. The departments did not believe that such would be the case and a representative was sent to investigate. To the astonishment of that investigator, it was found that the wages had been equalized (p. 145 of the report). It was doubted by the departments whether the United States had the power to pass any such laws. That was settled by the Supreme Court in the case of Strathearn v. Dillon (252 U. S., p. 348).

The Seamen's Act, however, used the broadest language that the legislators could find in determining to what vessels the law should be applied. They said "in all vessels" and "in no vessels", etc. It must have been the Department of Commerce and the Shipping Board who jointly prepared a report for the President (Mr. Wilson) which he took with him to Paris. This report showed that the equalization had already taken place in important harbors that it was progressing in a most favorable way. A copy of that report, with the exception of certain expressions used by consuls and others deleted, was given to me on my departure from Washington for Paris in order to be present at the peace conference. There is not the slightest doubt that the Seamen's Act properly carried out as intended would make all operating subsidies unnecessary. This is by no means to say that it may not be necessary to provide and maintain a building subsidy. The cost of building in Europe and America is notoriously different. There is no other differential in cost except the building cost and such expense as necessarily flows from that cost. There is, and may have to continue to be, a high office cost on shore arising out of the high wages of officials and directors of companies, together with the wages, perhaps higher, of purely office workers in shipping companies' offices. There is no reason why the American Government should not pay properly-nay, handsomely, if you please for any work which the shipping companies actually do for the Government, but neither the seamen nor the shipowners should be coddled.

The Shipping Act of 1920 (sec. 15) gives to the shipowners certain privileges in entering conferences with foreign-nation shipowners which are of unusual value especially to the foreign shipowner in which they are to agree upon common charges for carrying passengers and freight and to divide such carrying charges equitably. Since then the shipowners have scraped the bottom of the United States Treasury for more money and the cheapest employment places for the cheapest possible men. The continuation of that policy would make the development of sea power for the United States impossible. Some British shipping interests and statesmen are discussing the question of dealing with the different nations' vessels where subsidies are paid. Some shipowners strongly urge subsidies. Others together with statesmen urge the use of the sovereignty of imperial ports to prevent the payment of subsidies.

In the letter to Mr. Brattle a reference is made to the rulings made by the Department with reference to its application to foreign ships. That it was intended to so apply was not questioned by anybody and if it was not to apply at all there

was no necessity for repealing the treaties under which seamen were arrested and returned to the ships. When the departments came to construe the law they found that the language was so broad and so failed to be specific that sections 13 and 14 of the Seamen's Act were held to have practically no application to foreign vessels. As a result, foreign vessels were permitted to depart from ports of the United States under their own law both as to skill and number of men and the result has been the disasters to the Princess Sophia, the Vestris, and innumerable other vessels.

We believe that the departments will, under the urging of the International Shipping Federation, Ltd., coming through the mouths of representatives of American shipowners, give to the laws that are to be passed the most favorable construction that they can give to the shipowner.

For these reasons we most emphatically urge the insertion of the words "domestic or foreign" and the other amendments dealing with manning found

in S. 1933.

The United States used the sovereignty of the ports of the United States to equalize wages and if it had been permitted to go on without being destroyed by rulings, we should now have had the equalization of operating costs and we should by this time have had developed a personnel equal to that of any in the world.

For these reasons I recommend:

First, that the treaty of safety of life at sea signed in London, May 1919, be recalled from the Senate because it surrenders the sovereignty of our ports.

Second, that the Seamen's Act be restored by making it specifically apply to foreign and domestic vessels alike as long as foreign vessels are within the jurisdiction of the United States.

Third, I further recommend that the exemption of the 20-mile limit from shore be stricken out.

Fourth, that the section dealing with the lakes be rewritten in the interest of safety. At present the lake interests are legally entitled to drown about 90 percent of the people on board.

Fifth, that the limitation of liability be so arranged that it will provide as in the English law the equivalent of £15 per ton as liability for loss of life or injury of passengers and up to £8 per ton for the loss of cargo.

Sixth, that specific nonreducible fines based on the tonnage of the vessel or the actual daily cost of operating expenses be imposed for the violation of safety laws. (Present fines are so small as to be ridiculous.) That part of such fine be paid to the informer and that there be no limitation of liability granted to any vessel at all when it is proven that the loss resulted from the violation of any of the safety laws provided by Congress or by authority of Congress.

Attached hereto you will find a copy of A Message to Seamen; The Second Message to Seamen; a copy of the incorporation papers of the International Shipping Federation, Ltd., and a copy of a letter which has been previously sent to Mr. J. B. Weaver, of the Department of Commerce.

Hoping that this will be of some value to you and feeling that the administration is in serious earnestness about these matters, I beg to remain,

Mostly respectfully,

(S) ANDREW Furuseth,

President International Seamen's Union of America,
and Chairman of its Legislative Committee.

(E) EXTRACTS FROM THE SECOND MESSAGE TO SEAMEN, ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF SKILL

(By Andrew Furuseth)

The above description of how seamen have been developed in the past is now more important than ever. Sailing vessels rarely went beyond 15 knots per hourbeating against the wind they rarely went beyond 9 or 10 knots. There were 16 points in the compass where the vessels running before the wind would not expect to come in contact with other vessels unless they were beating or crossing her

course.

Modern vessels are running up to 25 knots with the prospect of reaching 30 and vessels may come from any direction into the course of some other vesseltherefore, lookout is more important than ever and it is quite a common thing for a large passenger vessel to have 4, 5, or 6 men on the lookout from different parts of the ship, using their ears as well as their eyes.

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