their jobs, was the only thing that would save their jobs. They had no illusions about the open shop or about the I. M. M.

Why, then, was this message drawn up? For one reason only. To be put into the record of the Commerce Committee hearings to secure passage of compulsory arbitration amendments to the Merchant Marine Act of 1938. This is borne out by the efforts of Commander R. S. Field, head of the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation, to supplement the message with testimony to the same effect-that union hiring throws men out of jobs.

Commander Field knows what the rotary system is. He certainly would never have the gall to try and instruct seamen on the merits or demerits of the closed shop. But he was induced to appear before the Copeland committee on the same day that the I. M. M. message was put in the record and repeat, for the benefit of the Senate Commerce Committee and the press the sentiments expressed therein.

COMPETENCE

At times when the operators want to discredit the unions, they claim that incompetent and disloyal men are sent aboard the ships. On that question, we have this to say:

We do not certify seamen. That is the job of the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation. We make no pretense of examining and grading to the men in the industry. That is the work of the Bureau. If incompetent men are carrying seamen's certificates it is because the companies rounded up these men during strikes and the Bureau certified them. We have no authority to question the issuance of certificates by the Federal Government.

During the 1939 tanker strike, the N. M. U. complained again and again to the Department of Commerce that the Bureau was handing out seamen's certificates wholesale. Men were given A. B. and lifeboat tickets who had never been on a ship in their lives.

All this talk about incompetent and disloyal men, of course, is not made in good faith. It is a smoke screen designed to hide attacks on union hiring. The only time we hear such complaints is when a contract is being negotiated, or when the operators are trying to put the unions at a disadvantage before the public. We never hear complaints at any other time. On the contrary, we hear mostly praise. The American seaman is an energetic, resourceful courageous man. The record of rescues at sea proves that. Almost every American crew involved in a rescue in the past 2 or 3 years was an N. M. U. crew, consisting of men who had come through the union hiring hall.

As a rule, if a man is not competent, he does not last long at sea. He suffers the contempt of his shipmates or he finds the life too hard. The union cannot blacklist him. If it did, the operators and the Maritime Commission would be the first to raise a hue and cry. Even as it is, we get complaints because we deny union membership to men with less than 6 months' sea service. This 6 months' rule was adopted to curb the flooding of this industry through the indiscriminate issuance of certificates by the Bureau.

On the one hand, we are blamed because the Bureau issues certificates to nonseamen. And on the other hand, we are criticized

for not taking in every Tom, Dick, and Harry who comes along. Is any further proof needed that the complaints are not made in good faith?

In its efforts to destroy union hiring, the Maritime Commission has been a willing ally of the shipowner. In addition to its refusal to grant collective-bargaining rights to its employees, its representatives at the Copeland hearings testified that the hiring halls should be done away with, in the interest of "progress." Further, the Commission asked the Department of Commerce to re-establish the shipping commissioners' offices as Government hiring halls to recruit crews for Commission ships.

The history of the shipping commissioners goes back to 1872. This was before the era of marine-labor organization. Hiring was done through boarding-house keepers, crimp herders, and shipping masters. Each of these preyed on job seekers, exacting tribute for employment. Seamen had no rights, either as regards hiring or working. A certain percentage of their ridiculously low pay had to be earmarked for the crimp herders or the shipping masters.

In order to afford some protection for seamen, and provide decent facilities for getting employment, Congress passed an act authorizing the Department of Commerce to open shipping commissioners' offices where seamen might register for jobs and where steamship companies might recruit replacements. As a matter of fact, the shipping commissioners' offices, although perhaps intended by Congress to serve as recruiting places, seldom, if ever, were so used. In accordance with the law, seamen signed the articles in the presence of the shipping commissioners, but in all the years since 1872, the actual recruiting, selecting, and hiring of the men has usually been done elsewhere. Thus, while the act was intended to help the seamen, it by no means succeeded in removing all the hiring evils of the period. The seamen's principal protection has come through the unions which had achieved considerable strength in some areas before the World War. After the World War, the U. S. Shipping Board set up an institution known as the Sea Service Bureau. After the unions were smashed in the post-war hysteria, the Sea Service Bureau was used by the Shipping Board and by some employers (notably the notorious antiunion Lakes Carriers' Association) as recruiting and hiring agencies. In some areas employers established their own hiring halls.

The fact that some of those had names similar to Sea Service Bureau (for example, the Marine Service Bureau in Los Angeles) often gave the impression to the public that the private halls were in fact Government operated. They were not, but the two institutions were alike in their antiunion character. Because of the prevalence of blacklisting and other antiunion activities in both the Government and employer halls, they came to be known as fink halls. Employers followed the Government's lead in conducting the halls on an antiunion basis. This situation persisted until 1934, when, at the insistence of the newly revived unions, the Government Sea Service Bureau was officially abolished. Beginning about the same time, the unions gradually succeeded in forcing the employers to abandon the private fink halls and obtain men through union hiring halls.

Consequently, now that the marine unions have their own hiring halls, the Commission's attempt to open up the old shipping commissioners' offices as hiring places can only be viewed in one light. It could only be construed as a flank attack on the unions. As long as the fink hall exists, the seamen have hanging over them the constant threat of destruction of their organizations and a return to the "dark ages" of preunion conditions.

The Commission claims that it cannot use the union hall because it is a Government agency and cannot favor union men over nonunion men. Formerly, however, its replacements came from the union hall, up until the N. M. U. won an election on the ships of a Commission-owned line, the Southgate Nelson. The War Department, which operates the Panama Railroad Line, finds no difficulty in securing replacements from the N. M. U. hall. The Federal Barge Line on the Mississippi, formerly operated by the War Department and now operated by the Department of Commerce, has signed a collective bargaining agreement with both the Inland Boatmen's Division of the N. M. U. and with the International Longshoremen's Association (A. F. L.).

Before leaving the subject of hiring, I should like to cite the findings of the Maritime Labor Board as set forth in its report to the President and to Congress on March 1 of last year. The Board described and discussed seven different methods of hiring seamenfrom "shipping off the dock" or "pierhead hiring" to the union hiring hall.

Of pierhead hiring, the Board said:

Perhaps the simplest method of selecting crews and making replacements is the now almost obsolete practice of "pierhead hiring" or "hiring off the dock." Under this system seamen in search of berths gathered in a group at the wharf upon the arrival or departure of a vessel. A "shipping master" then selected those who were to sign on for any berths that might be open aboard the ship. Because of the power to hire or reject thus vested in the hands of a single individual, this method of "shipping off the dock" lent itself to discrimination, favoritism, and various forms of petty graft.

Of crimp joints, the Board said:

Throughout the greater part of the nineteenth century seamen were customarily supplied to the vessels of the United States merchant marine by private "shipping masters" who were engaged by the operating shipping companies and were paid a stipulated fee for each seaman that was supplied. These private shipping masters almost always owned a sailors' boarding house, restaurant, saloon, or brothel; or were in close financial contact with such establishments. Frequently these establishments were operated as "crimp joints" from which sailors were “shanghaied”—

In other words, forced into involuntary service aboard some vessel just about to sail

while drunk, drugged, or overcome by force. Thus, by means of theft, fraud, or trickery, a sailor might lose the accumulated wages of many months at sea in a single night and so become dependent for another berth upon the proprietor of the establishment. In other cases seamen were led or tricked into running up large debts that could only be paid by consigning their wages to the proprietor when signing shipping articles. Fortunately, these reprehensible practices have now been abolished, largely through the growth of unions and the passage of Federal legislation designed to curb the ruthless exploitation of seamen.

The Board recognized the value of union hiring as a defense against the vicious employer blacklist. On that question the Board spoke as follows:

Disputes over the closed shop and preferential hiring occur in all industries, especially during the early phases of collective bargaining. Such disputes are particularly likely to arise in industries where employers habitually discriminate against union members in hiring and firing personnel. Disputes of this nature tend, moreover, to be particularly acute in industries where the union can only win its claim to recognition by breaking down a system of blacklisting, organized and maintained by the employers as a body.

THE CONTINUOUS DISCHARGE BOOK

The continuous discharge book raises the same issue, of course, which was raised early in 1937 when the seamen for the first time were breaking the bonds that had held them in subjugation and organizing their own union. At that time the continuous discharge book amendment was introduced to prevent the new union from coming into being. Now it is being introduced to destroy the one that has already been organized.

Our objections to this book are the same as they were then. It is (1) primarily a blacklisting weapon, and (2) it establishes the equivalent of a "labor front" for the marine industry. The shipowners want a club that they can use to destroy marine labor organization and dominate the industry as they did in the days before the Black investigation. They count on this book becoming this club.

The arguments of the shipowners for the book boil down to these: 1. It will serve to weed out incompetent men and keep competent. men on the ships;

2. It will aid safety at sea; and

3. It will prevent the purchase of discharge papers by nonseamen. At a matter of fact, the continuous discharge book will do none of these things, and it is not intended by the operators to do any of these things. The evils listed above are evils initiated and encouraged by the operators in the first place.

As I pointed out before, if there are incompetent men in the industry, they are there because the operators brought them in by the droves. to replace competent union men during strikes or during periods of union organization. Operators are not interested in incompetence or competence. They are interested in unionization and nonunionization. We shall point out later how the operators, with the connivance of the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation, handed out seamen's certificates like leaflets to nonseamen during strikes. So we are not impressed by this fake plea for competent men. Standards of seamanship are higher now, since the establishment of the National Maritime Union, than at any time in the history of American shipping-and we guarantee this.

The continuous discharge book will hinder safety at sea, not promote it. As proved elsewhere in this report, the operators have been the greatest and most persistent enemies of safety at sea. The seamen

have done more to promote sea safety since the formation of their union than the operators have even done. If the operators can seize complete control of the industry, through operation of the book, they will use this control, not to promote safety but to hinder it. Seasafety devices and regulations cost money-and the operators don't want that. If this committee really wants to promote sea safety, it will defeat the Dirksen bill and all such union-wrecking proposals and cooperate with the seamen-the men who man the

ships and who are sincere in their desire to see a strong merchant marine and know it can only be achieved through good conditions and strong unions.

Now, as for the third brief reason given by the operators for the continuous discharge book-that it will prevent the purchase of discharge papers-we want to point out that it is the union which has discouraged this practice. We have taken it upon ourselves to keep watch over the industry to that extent. The time when purchase of discharge papers flourished to the greatest extent was the time when the operators had unrestricted control over the industry. That they cannot deny. Again, we say that this committee can best prevent these practices by cooperating with the unions in stabilizing the shipping industry.

So much for the ostensible reasons. I want to discuss for a moment the real reasons why the operators want this book. This reason is never mentioned by shipowner agents in their remarks favoring the bill.

The operators' real reason for wanting this book is the desire for a blacklist. They want to establish a "labor front" for seamen so that they will have absolute control of the industry. Their reasons for wanting absolute control of the industry are clear to anyone who has read the testimony before the Black committee which investigated subsidy racketeering. With control of the industry, the operators would have another field day with the Public Treasury. They would be able to put wages and working conditions back where they were before the days of union organization-conditions described, even by the shipowner partisans, as "intolerable." I want to quote a paragraph from the Maritime Commission's economic survey, published in November 1937. This gives a picture of preunion conditions in the merchant marine-conditions to which the operators would naturally like to return. [Reading:]

Wages fell and working conditions grew steadily worse until, at the depth of the depression, some American seamen were receiving as little as $25 a month, living under wretched conditions, eating unpalatable food, and working 12 hours or more a day.

With unrestricted control of the industry, the operators can trim both the public and the seamen to the tune of millions of dollars. You all recall how the operators came to Congress with pleas for higher subsidies on the ground that American wages were higher than foreign wages. Yet, at the very time they were getting the highest subsidies, seamen's wages in this country were the lowest in recent history and seamen got less value for the services than the seamen of most European countries.

All members of the committee know how a blacklist operates. Shipping offices keep a list of seamen known to favor unionization. These men are denied jobs in the industry. The word gets around that union sympathizers are not wanted. This serves to discourage talk of a union. Pretty soon, union sympathizers are forced out of the industry altogether-if the operators can operate their blacklist unrestrictedly.

This issue is so clear that we are at a loss to understand how the continuous discharge book can be offered seriously as an aid to the industry. If it were offered frankly as a blacklist, we could see some justification for presenting it in that light. Then Congress could pass