directed by Congress to make a thorough investigation of the industry and to report to it in March of 1940. The Maritime Labor Board, accordingly, made a thoroughly documented and comprehensive report.

The Maritime Labor Board's studies delved into many fields, among them in particular that of railway-labor legislation in the United States, with special reference to the development of adjustment machinery and a study of foreign machinery for collective bargaining and adjustment of disputes. The findings of the Maritime Labor Board, and the comprehensive study made by the President's Commission on the Industrial Relations in Great Britain, and their findings, lead to but one conclusion, and that is that voluntary mediation and arbitration is the only basis for fostering and guaranteeing peaceful relations between employers and employees. The Maritime Labor Board report specifically concluded as follows, and I read from the closing statement of the Maritime Labor Board's report:

The experience of the railroad industry shows that a satisfactory system of adjusting disputes is one of the most important prerequisites to stable labor relations, and that the development of a satisfactory adjustment system requires not only time but also a meeting of minds between the parties themselves upon its essential elements. In the maritime industry, however, there is no present indication of such a meeting of minds. Moreover, there are still agreements where provisions for adjusting disputes entirely lacking, and where agreements do provide adjustment facilities, they are either inadequate or do not function effectively, because of insufficient experience of the parties or because of mutual distrust, or both.

The very limited scope of collective bargaining on the Great Lakes and on the oil tankers continues to be a potential source of industrial conflict. The refusal of the United States Maritime Commission to recognize collective bargaining on merchant vessels operated for its account by managing agents, and the unsettled problems of the legal status of seamen are other factors impeding the development of collective bargaining in the maritime industry.

Long experience with compulsory arbitration in New Zealand and Australia proves that industrial conflict cannot be abolished by restrictive measures. But irrespective of this fact, belief in restrictive measures prevails among a significant proportion of maritime employers and represents a serious obstacle to that friendly cooperation between both parties which is prerequisite to "amicable adjustment" of disputes and "stabilization" of labor relations.

The history of labor relations in the United States amply demonstrates that the degree of success in stabilizing labor relations depends upon the degree to which both employers and employees are sincere in recognizing their several rights and mutual responsibilities through the process of voluntary collective bargaining.

The scholarly and painstaking analysis of the history of collective bargaining for more than a century in Great Britain, prepared by the President's Commission on Industrial Relations in Great Britain, and the report to Congress made by the Maritime Labor Board must impel this committee and Congress to reject each and every provision contained in H. R. 2662.

The sponsors of this bill, regrettably, have been motivated by spurious, inconsequential and irresponsible utterances and publications of persons, none of whom have any regard for the consequences of their unwarranted attacks upon the newly organized maritime unions in our country.

Let us now examine what motivated the introduction of H. R. 2662 by Honorable Everett M. Dirksen. It is because sit-down strikes and labor disputes in the maritime industry have increased since 1938? Is it because there has been an untoward interference with commerce that this bill is being introduced? Is it because the maritime unions

have failed to fulfill their solemn obligations under the written agreements entered into by them with the steamship companies? Is it because the shipowners have at any time stated that the rotary hiring hall is inefficient and that the maritime workers have failed in their obligations under the agreement? By no means.

None of these factors motivated the introduction of H. R. 2662. Because as the honorable chairman of this committee stated on the floor of Congress on January 30 of this year, and I quote:

* * * data for the first half of the year 1940 shows remarkable improvement so far as the strike situation is concerned. There were 16 strikes of seamen in that period. There were no sit-down strikes. There were four walk-outs involving 87 persons.

The situation is indeed a tribute to the sincere effort the employers and employees in the industry are making to eliminate strife.

Has there been any interference with commerce because of the failure of the National Maritime Union to fulfill its obligations? Of course not. On only one occasion has the arbitration clause of the National Maritime Union agreement been invoked, and that more than 2 years ago. All disputes since 1937, and up to the present time, have been amicably adjusted by port committees composed of shipowner representatives and representatives of the unions.

Statistics will be introduced indicating the limits to which the National Maritime Union has gone to discipline its own members for misconduct such as drunkenness and other minor infractions, which might reflect upon the general good faith of the union. And yet, in spite of this situation, H. R. 2662 was introduced.

The sponsors of this bill, on the floor of Congress, referred to various publications in which the National Maritime Union and its officials have been repeatedly attacked and stigmatized. Let us examine the basis of these charges. I shall not refer by name to any of the officers or the publications, but it was a fact that in 1938 there was considerable friction within the ranks of the National Maritime Union. For no good reason at all during the fight on the tanker agreement an opposition paper was published. No one knew who the author of it was. Friction at meetings took place, and some of the officials refused to abide by the decision of the majority of the executive board. Then, finally, in October of 1938, one official published an exposé on what had been occurring since the fight on the oil-tanker agreement began. For instance, he stated and named the national treasurer of the National Maritime Union as the person, who met them, outstanding officials all named in publications, officials of unions in which the name of the steamship, the officials that were active, and the persons in the steamship companies who were the pay-off men, of these companies. He named a thousand dollars being paid over in the office of one vice president of a national oil company. He refers to meetings at hotels-secret meetings. Now, all of this was on the pretext that this group was fighting subversive elements. That was long before we had a national-emergency situation. The papers were full in New York City of subversive elements. Then later one of these officials, a district official, was arrested for forgery, and in prison he made a confession naming the persons who were employees of the Railway Oil Co., a nationally known labor-herding agency which was sent in, a man by the name of Coolich, who was sent in especially during the time the fight on the tanker agreement was being continued

to try to create friction. The membership put the national officer on trial, they put all of the others accused as subversive and antiunion elements on trial. After the trial, at a meeting of 3,000 or 4,000, the report of the trial committee was presented, and by unanimous vote of the membership these officials were ejected. Those were the subversive men sent into the ranks of the National Maritime Union by the steamship owners and it was on the premise there were subversive elements within the union.

The next important question is whether or not these men were given a fair trial. Congressman Ramspeck for one was interested when Mr. O'Donnell testified as to the manner in which subversive elements have control at the meetings of the union. In New York City, certain minutes of meetings will take place-meetings take place attended by 1,000 to 3,000 generally. We have to hold these meetings in special halls and they also have the requirement that no man can get a job unless his card is stamped, and that stamping of the cards takes place at the end of the meeting, so that whatever resolutions are introduced during the meetings, the entire membership passes on those resolutions which are introduced. Now, it is at meetings of that kind at which these subversive elements in the union were tried and expelled from the union. It is not surprising that one of these national officers has since been sentenced to a long term in prison, and all of these elements that claimed that their activity was due to Communist subversive elements in the union have all been kicked by the members, and it was when those elements were kicked out of the unions that peace and harmony was established within the union. If an investigation among all of the operators were to take place, they would tell you that since those elements were rejected, ships sail and negotiations are carried out amicably between the unions and the operators, which was not true when those elements were in there trying to get a renewal of the National Maritime Union agreement.

Now, when these men were rejected they published pamphlets, finding all kinds of reasons why they were rejected. Some material in their pamphlets has since been published by the Dies committee, but these subversive elements within the National Maritime Union, and within any union, this inchoate kind of an entity become persons who were subversive in 1935, when the present C. I. O. union rebelled against the leadership of the A. F. of L., I can recall the charges and affidavits in the Supreme Court trials, where an official of a union came to a meeting with his .45 automatic in his brief case and planked it down on his desk and told the men that they better behave themselves, and it was those persons within the ranks who rebelled against that kind of leadership who were called Communists and called subversive elements, and when they brought action in the Supreme Court they were able to establish that those leaders of the I. S. M., who called them Communists, and subversive leaders, were guilty of stealing $96,000, which I was able to prove in the Supreme Court action. I was able to prove that.

Of course, we have now a situation in our country where the word "subversive" because of the national emergency takes on a new connotation, but you must remember that subversiveness within the maritime unions antedates the present situation, at a time when the Maritime Union was first emerging from its backward stage, when it was first asking for negotiations with shipowners, and it was these sub

versive elements within the unions that created the talk of subversiveness and communism within the union.

Mr. RAMSPECK. I hope you will hurry up and conclude. You have had 35 minutes since you said you wanted 20. We have to get ahead. Mr. STANDARD. I have omitted some of it. Then, on January 31, Congressman Dirksen referred to an address made by Mr. Daniel S. Ring, personnel director of the United States Maritime Commission. Mr. O'BRIEN. That was at St. Louis, was it not?

Mr. STANDARD. Yes; I think it was in St. Louis. I have it later on. The antilabor attitude of the United States Maritime Commission has on numerous occasions been presented on hearings on various bills held by congressional committees.

As evidence of this antilabor policy we have the position of the Maritime Commission toward its own employees in refusing to accord collective-bargaining rights to them.

In 1938 the United States Maritime Commission operated in private trade and in competition with other operators a fleet of 40 vessels. The United States Maritime Commission refused to accord collectivebargaining rights to its seamen. That this refusal to accord collectivebargaining rights to its employees is in violation of law is borne out by the decision of Mr. Justice Marshall in 1824, in which he stated:

It is, we think, a sound principle, that when a Government becomes a partner in any trading company it divests itself, so far as concerns the transactions of that company, of its sovereign character and takes that of a private citizen. Instead of communicating to the company its privileges and prerogatives, it descends to a level with those with whom it associates itself and takes the character which belongs to its associates and to the business which is to be transacted (Bank of United States v. Planters Bank, 9 Wheat. 904, 907).

And the Maritime Commission, although engaged in operating vessels in competition with private owners, refused to grant collective bargaining to its employees, even though in one instance an election was held by the National Labor Relations Board, and the National Maritime Union won by a vote of 235 to 8, and after such vote still the Maritime Commission refuses to deal with the duly designated collective-bargaining agency.

Congress, in creating the United States Maritime Commission in 1936, did so not only with a full awareness of the fact that American commerce is in dire need of an American merchant marine but also because it felt that an American merchant marine could be used as an auxiliary in the event of a national emergency. If we are to assume that we are now faced with that emergency, we charge that the United States Maritime Commission, in inspiring legislation like H. R. 2662, exhibits a positive intent to stimulate and encourage strife between the American ship operators and their ships' personnel.

If there is any doubt that the charge against the Commission of fostering discontent is valid, reference should be made to two incidents which occurred within a day of each other.

On January 23 Daniel S. Ring, Director of the Division of Maritime Personnel of the United States Maritime Commission, in addressing the Sixty-fifth Annual Convention of the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association in St. Louis, discussed at considerable length the question of the need of maintaining authority upon vessels on the high seas. Mr. Ring has apparently been taken in completely by the irresponsible statements of the expelled union officials, and in spite of

the record recommended the giving of unlimited authority to masters in the selection of the crew. I might state that among the persons named in the ship dealings between the operators and former officials of the union is a National Maritime Union official, and that official is now an employee of the United States Maritime Commission.

By a strange coincidence, almost simultaneously with Director Ring's address, a report was released by another Government agency, which repudiates the charges made by the Director of the Division of Maritime Personnel. On the very day following Director Ring's report-and that report was a report made before another convention-to wit, on January 24, the Journal of Commerce carried a statement to the effect that Special Agent B. E. Sackett, of the F. B. I., stated "that there has been no evidence found to date of attempts to sabotage vessels of the American merchant marine."

The chairman of this committee has already stated on the floor of the House the findings of F. B. I. Agent Sackett. We submit that if it were a fact, as was stated by Director Daniel S. Ring, that "from one end of the country to the other have come demands for purges"rather odd word for a Federal official to use-because of the presence of subversive elements, certainly the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose main responsibility it is to uncover and expose such subversive activities, would not have found it difficult to reveal.

That all the charges made by Mr. William McFee, Mr. Charles Yale Harrison, and Director Daniel S. Ring are utterly unfounded is borne out not only by the statement of F. B. I. Agent B. E. Sackett, but also by the fact that only a short time ago the Federal Bureau of Investigation "pigeon-holed"—that word is in quotes, and it is so noted in the Journal of Commerce-a report which it had conducted on the waterfront throughout the country, because the investigation revealed no facts justifying any action on the part of the Department of Justice, and yet Director Daniel S. Ring receives letters from all over the country demanding "purges."

Congressman Dirksen has repeatedly quoted from the articles of McFee, Harrison, and others, whose sole source for their accusations were the disgruntled expelled officials of the union. But, on the other hand, there is a wealth of material, and most scholarly sources, for the conclusion that compulsory mediation is not appropriate for the maritime industry.

The President's Commission on Industrial Relations in Great Britain was composed of usch outstanding public figures as Lloyd K. Garrison, dean of the law school of the University of Illinois, and recently a member of the President's Commission to investigate administrative agencies, Gerard Swope, former chairman of the board of the General Electric Co., Anna Marie Rosenberg, for many years having devoted almost a lifetime toward the study and investigation of labor relations, Marian Dickerman, Henry I. Harriman, Charles R. Hook, and Robert J. Watt, the latter the American workers' delegate to the International Labor Office at Geneva, and who now, I believe, is General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board. The Maritime Labor Board, which, for almost 2 years, has been engaged in an exhaustive study of the maritime industry, made a thoroughly documented survey of the existing, and now I quote chapter heads, "Machinery and procedure for the adjustment of disputes among seamen" (ch. 12 of its report); a study of Railway Labor