As for discipline-it is not the seamen who need discipline- it is the shipowners. We have discipline. We discipline ourselves. We work on ships. We know what discipline means to the operation of a vessel or to the American Merchant Marine as a whole.

But that is the discipline of free and satisfied workers. That is not the discipline of slaves and indentured servants. It is discipline which demands a reciprocal

discipline on the part of the employers.

Naturally, the shipowners don't want that. They want the freedom to drive their employees like serfs or cattle. They want the freedom to manhandle the seamen like slaves. They want the freedom to run ships without safety that cost money.

They know that they cannot get those things bargaining with free men. So, as a necessary preliminary to getting those things, they want to take away that freedom.

In our opinion, the seamen will not let them do it. We have worked long and hard to build our unions, fought against tremendous odds and the united opposition of powerful forces.

Now that we have the means through which we can secure decent wages, decent working conditions, improved safety-at-sea regulation, and the rights enjoyed by other workmen-now that we have those things, we are not going to give them up easily.

If the Maritime Commission is sincere in wishing to avoid strikes, build discipline, and improve safety at sea, let it cooperate with the seamen in their efforts to bring those things about. Together we can make the shipowners peaceful and law-abiding.

SUMMARY

It is not our purpose, in this report, to take a position of opposition wholly to the Commission's recommendations. With those recommendations, calculated to aid the people in carrying out the provisions and the spirit of the 1936 Marine Act, we are heartily in accord. With every move and proposal calculated to improve the efficient operation of American merchant fleets, we will cooperate. We are anxious to cooperate. We, as maritime workers, make our living in the marine industry. All of our efforts, as organized workers, are aimed at improving the working conditions, operating mechanics, and safety provisions on our ships. We would like to be able to report that the shipowners were cooperative. Unfortunately, we cannot do that. The reason, we believe, is that any improvement in working conditions, operating mechanics, and safety regulations will cost the shipowners money. That money, as the Black report showed, is wanted

elsewhere.

Therefore, we are of necessity constrained to urge upon Congress, as representing the best interests of the American people, to consider carefully the proposals outlined in the report of the Maritime Commission and, if it find that continued operation of our fleets by private companies is inconsistent with the aims set forth in the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, not to hesitate in taking a progressive stand for the only logical alternate proposal-Government ownership and operation.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you see Mr. McFee's reply to that?

Mr. EMERSON. I don't think I have.

The CHAIRMAN. It was found in the New York Sun of December 4, 1937.

Mr. EMERSON. I don't read the Sun; I read the Times.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you read it because it is communistic?

Mr. EMERSON. No, sir; I think it is fair and impartial. I think it is the world's best newspaper.

The CHAIRMAN. Suppose I told you that Mr. McFee said:

Maritime council of C. I. O. releases confusing report on Commission's report to Congress.

Mr. EMERSON. Mr. McFee has very seldom agreed with us, except one time.

The CHAIRMAN. He is usually wrong?

Mr. EMERSON. No; he does not agree. Just because he does not agree does not say he is wrong.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, maybe he is a liar.

Mr. EMERSON. No; I never call anybody a liar. I try to use the same subtle language as Members of Congress, in my humble way. The CHAIRMAN. I think we had better have inserted Mr. McFee's analysis of this report.

(The newspaper article in the New York Sun, Saturday, December 4, 1937, entitled "McFee on Ships," is inserted in the record at this point:)

[New York Sun, Saturday, December 4, 1937]

MCFEE ON SHIPS-MARITIME COUNCIL OF C. I. O. RELEASES COnfusing REPORT ON COMMISSION'S REPORT TO CONGRESS-ADVOCATES GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP OF ALL SHIPS, BUT WOULD NOT TRAIN MEN IN COAST GUARD

(By William McFee)

Soon after the release of the Maritime Commission's report to Congress on November 10, another report upon this report was circulated in mimeograph form, originating in the New York Maritime Council of the C. I. O. For various reasons this production has not received much publicity and the council will undoubtedly attribute this neglect, like other unsuccessful authors of fiction, to a plot of the interests.

The New York Maritime Council consists of representatives of the National Maritime Union, the Union of Masters, Mates, and Pilots, the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association, the Apprentice Engineers Association, the Scandinavian Seamen's Club, the Lumber Workers' Union, the American Radio Telegraphists' Association, and the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers. All these unions are, it goes without saying, affiliated with the C. I. O.

Not only is the report of this maritime council anonymous, not only does it fail to enumerate the representatives who assented to it, but it bears no date. This may not seem a vital matter, but it indicates the general character of the production, which is pretentious, inadequate, and inaccurate.

EXPRESSING LABOR'S CASE

The Maritime Council is an association of labor unions electing to express the opinion of labor on a Government report on the conditions of an industry. Here was a first-rate chance to show us what they could do, to speak on behalf of labor with the voice of labor, in a manner and style comprehensible to workingmen. But instead of following Mr. Kennedy's excellent example and making the meaning plain in the shortest words and sentences, our left-wing friends, carried away by the wind of their own eloquence, have resorted to polysyllabic confusion and complicated hyperbole to conceal the poverty of their argument. The style of this report is in the very bad tradition of circumlocutory prose. Never under any circumstance does the anonymous author use one word when he can find a dozen to do the work.

The manner in which the report is drafted, however, is overshadowed by the cool impudence of the assumption that nobody connected with shipping has ever shown either honesty, patriotism or good faith save the unions in the Maritime Council. It is overshadowed by the deliberate misreading of the Kennedy report and the ignoring of the Maritime Commission's blunt charges. The conclusion one arrives at, after a careful reading of the unionists' report, is that unless they are permitted to take over both the merchant marine and the Maritime Commission, unless both Congress and the ship operators accept the dictatorship of the C. I. O. Maritime Council, there can be no peace on the water front.

Now, where have we heard that tone before? The reader of this column is probably unfamiliar with the personality and literary style of Roy Hudson, who is known more familiarly along the New York water front as "Jerusalem Slim" or "The Great White Father." Mr. Hudson is the moving spirit of the marine section of the Communist Party and his assignment is to capture the left-wing unions by peaceful penetration, the Communist faithful keeping out of the limelight. The style of the Maritime Council's report is strikingly in the Roy Hudson vein. His frantic efforts to get American seamen to join in the civil war in Spain are couched in the same style as the report. The report's declaration that the

courage of American seamen has been written about since the days of the Phoenicians is a distinctly Roy Hudson touch.

Those inside the Maritime Council who carry out the Hudson policies are Thomas Ray, who figures as secretary, and the lawyer, William L. Standard, who contributes to the New Masses in his spare time. The treasurer of the deck division of the N. M. U. Blackey Myers, Jack Lawrenson, and, in fact, most of the district committee in New York, are members of the Communist Party. Of all these Ray is the most important because he is unofficial coach to Joseph Curran when that gentleman is stumped for a fact or an argument. Thomas Ray is Roy Hudson's man Friday, but he has a very different role in the company of the inexperienced seamen who are the official heads of the new union.

GIST OF COUNCIL'S REPORT

It is not a wild guess that the report is the handiwork of the astute minds of these men who have, owing to their experience in organization and their knowledge of what are called strike parliamentary rules, achieved such an ascendency in the new unions. It is well to remember that for 15 years the seamen had engaged in no major strikes, and the secession from the International left them without an executive staff. The Communist Party moved in, and has been a dominating factor in the N. M. U. policies ever since. And in a report of this character, issued by the Maritime Council, the voice is the voice of political strategists and

not of the seamen.

The gist of the report, concealed in a mass of heavy verbiage, is that the council demands Government ownership of the merchant marine. The council, having no faith in the United States Government, if we are to believe the major portion of this report, has come to the conclusion that the United States Government should be intrusted with the operation of the ships. The report asserts that under private ownership occurred the scandals revealed by the Senate committee. The Maritime Council omits to mention that even smellier scandals took place under Government ownership. It omits the universally known fact that every Government that has tried to own and run ships has had to admit failure and incur staggering financial losses.

A good part of the report deals with the Algic case, which is still in the courts, and it is necessary to refer to that case here for a moment, because the Maritime Council attempts to confuse the issue. The word "mutiny" is used lavishly because Mr. Roper, by characterizing a former strike as mutiny, made an unfortunate error. The council pretends that the Algic case is on all fours with the California case, which it is not. The latter ship had a sit-down strike, while tied up at the dock, in an American port. The Algic was at anchor in a foreign port. The Algie was under articles on a foreign voyage. The Maritime Commission, when the crew refused duty under articles, was perfectly justified in ordering them to be put in irons. The question of "mutiny" did not arise. Mutiny is an attempt to seize the ship on the high seas. The Algic's crew, in order to hamper the voyage, sought to stage a strike in sympathy with Uruguayan longshoremen. The Algie's crew, as the press reports show, had been insubordinate from the beginning. They had sought to force the master into a trade union. They had attempted to go ashore against orders in boats in another port and one of them had been drowned. They had shut off deck steam against orders. The council report tries to make these men out as martyred heroes in the cause of labor.

It is a pity that the representatives of maritime labor could not have made a more skillful gesture than this clumsy and spiteful document. It does not represent the sentiments of seafaring men. It reeks with the windy rhetoric of the local commissars who are museling in on the seamen's unions It would be a most excellent thing if it could be rewritten in language an ordinary seaman or fireman could understand, and without the suggestion (which is implicit in the present version) that nobody in the Government or the shipping business is to be trusted except the Maritime Council.

CONTRACT NOT BINDING ON MEN

The plea of the leftwing unions, in simple language, is that articles, the contract signed before sailing, are not binding on the men, but are binding on the employer and the Government. The argument of this column is that the labor leaders refuse to face this question. It has to be answered because it forms the vital difference between employment on shore in a factory and employment at sea on a ship. The status of a seaman who has signed articles for a voyage differs from a man with an hourly or weekly wage on shore. If the unions insist that men

shall be free to stage irresponsible strikes any time they wish, under articles in foreign harbors, the operators will not be able to share that view. In less than no time at all, seamen would not be content with shutting off auxiliary steam. They would be stopping the engines at sea to hold a meeting and take a vote as to what port to steer for.

The conclusion the Maritime Council claims to have reached is that all American ships should be owned and operated by the United States Government. At the same time it advances the surprising doctrine that seamen should not be trained in the Coast Guard, which is a Government service, on the ground that the young men would there be inoculated with antilabor ideas. The mountain of ponderous and muddled phraseology has brought forth a mouse. What the Maritime Council really meant to say, but was reluctant to put on paper, was that it wants the ships to be owned and operated by the C. I. O.

Chairman Kennedy's report to Congress described American shipping as "a sick industry." The Maritime Council's prescription for restoring a sick industry to health is to strangle it with the cord of Government operation.

Mr. EMERSON. I should also like to have incorporated in the record three articles from The Pilot, which is the official organ of the National Maritime Union of America, issue of November 12, 1937. These articles are headed: "Campaigning against Seamen," written by Joseph Curran; "The 'Washington Post' Attacks," written by Ralph Emerson; and an editorial "Why Sit-Downs?"

Of course, I do not expect to have the pictures put in, especially the one showing the cook carrying the maggoty food aboard ship. The CHAIRMAN. We shall omit the pictures by request of the witness. Mr. EMERSON. As it is impossible for us to obtain space in the paid press that is given to the shipping interests, we strongly request that these three articles be incorporated in the record as being the only means by which we can bring the true facts and the whole situation before the American public.

The CHAIRMAN. We shall be glad to have them.

(The articles entitled "Campaigning Against Seamen," "The 'Washington Post' Attacks," and "Why Sit-Downs?" appearing in The Pilot for November 12, 1937, are to be included in the record at this point:)

[From The Pilot, November 12, 1937]

CAMPAIGNING AGAINST SEAMEN-THE PRESENT SENTIMENT AGAINST AMERICAN SEAMEN HAS BEEN BUILT UP SINCE 1935

(From an address by Joe Curran delivered recently at Baltimore)

The present sentiment against the American seaman was built up from 1935 when the seaman took steps to better his conditions. At that time we found a group of reactionary shipowners along with the labor fakers of the International Seamen's Union-Scharrenberg, Carlson, Pryor, and Grange-meeting in New York with a lawyer of the International Mercantile Marine, Ira Campbell.

The object of this meeting was to plan certain means to combat the militancy and organizational growth of the seamen into bona fide labor unions. After considerable discussion along with retired rear admirals, it was decided to draft a bill and present it to Congress. The aim of this bill was to make slaves of the seamen by subjecting them to naval discipline and blacklisting.

They carried on a campaign of propaganda in every newspaper throughout the country, holding the seamen up as mutineers. Then they were ready to introduce the bill.

It now became necessary for them to find a willing tool. Who was more logical than Dr. Copeland? This adopted "nephew" of William Randolph Hearst took the bill to his bosom and through Hearst brought all the reactionaries' power behind the bill when it came before the House. We all know how successful they

were.

But the seamen in the meantime had gone a long way on the road to solidarity and unity with the result that after our march to Washington we were able to convince Congress that the blacklisting Copeland books should be done away with.

Subsequently the Maritime Commission was appointed. We were fortunate in having two progressive members named to this board. One was so outstandingly progressive that when the investigation of conditions on American ships was presented to this Board he condemned them. This report of Dr. Bloch's was lost by the Maritime Commission, the same as the statements that the union took to Washington.

Another member of this Maritime Board was Daniel S. Ring, a goon of Ryan's and an open scab herder during the recent maritime strike. A few months after Ring was appointed I was standing on the street when he (Ring) accosted me and asked why Ryan and I couldn't get along together. Ring was the messenger boy.

The reward of the progressive member, Dr. Bloch, who recommended that the seamen should have better conditions, was to be put into an office compiling statistics.

A week ago Chairman Kennedy of the Commission came out with a statement that he agreed with the minimum-wage conditions. Let us see how this works out. We have been negotiating with the Black Diamond Line, all of whose ships are controlled by the Maritime Commission. They agreed to all our demands, agreed to recognition of the hiring hall, the 8-5 working day and cash for all overtime after 5 p. m. and Saturday afternoon, and Sundays in all ports. But when we proposed the minimum-wage scale of $100 they passed the buck to the Maritime Commission with the result that negotiations are at a standstill. (Subsequently an agreement was signed, which is published in full in this number of the Pilot.)

The Algic affair, which is now before us, is something we have been expecting for the last 2 years. We must see that it is given publicity and that all the power and forces of the trade-unions and the C. I. O. movement back us up.

I was in Washington when this thing broke. The newspapers said all kinds of things about it. Washington newspapers had the story plastered all over.

Kennedy, head of the Maritime Commission, was supposed to give protection to these men in Montevideo, who could not work because the longshoremen were on strike and there were strikebreakers and scabs around.

The crew refused to work, and asked the master for protection. He not only refused to give the crew protection, but informed them that Joseph P. Kennedy of the Maritime Commission had threatened that if they did not return to work, they would be thrown into irons. And they went back to work. The captain and the mate scared the crew, scared them to such an extent that three of the men deserted. They were scared off the ship.

These young boys had not been very experienced and they were scared easily, and then they had seen Mutiny on the Bounty, too, and so they left the ship and were drowned. The captain is the real murderer.

Now the Commission would like to drop the case. It is hot and it involves every trade union in this country and telegrams are pouring into President Roosevelt now from all over. The C. I. O. has thrown every inch of support into this fight and most of the A. F. of L. unions have done so too.

They brought the ship to Baltimore for one purpose. There are two court decisions there that have been handed down over a number of years by a judge who was completely against labor. Now, in the District of New York, they could not win because of the case of the Texan and some others, in which the decisions were favorable to labor. They didn't want to win the case. The newspapers for 5 days carried headlines, pictures and stories which read mutiny, murder, and desertion aboard American ships, so that passengers are afraid for their lives.

The seamen who were on that ship are 100 percent seamen and they are so confident of the justness of their position that the entire 14 signed a petition to stay in jail until the very bottom falls out, to prove their innocence.

Certain people have been up to see President Roosevelt and he has told them definitely: "It is in your hands. You started it, and you finish it." But we are going to show them once and for all that the seamen are the same as any other working people in this country and we are going to use this case to prove it to them. The campaign we have started in the N. M. U. Hall recently--a couple of thousand envelopes, in which was enclosed a resolution and form telegram, went out to every trade union in the United States asking those unions to send the telegram to Roosevelt and also the resolution.

And if the case becomes such that these seamen might have to go to jail-we once had 2,000 seamen in Washington, and then it was not organized, and certainly, we can have 20,000 seamen there if we organize it properly.

We are not condoning mutiny or strikes in foreign ports. We are first, last, and always, seamen. We are not going out on irresponsible strikes. We are going to tell the President of this country in every way possible, telegrams and resolu