SHIPPING COMMISSIONERS. During the year 650,840 officers and men have been shipped, reshipped, and discharged, including repeated shipments and discharges by shipping commissioners, compared with 628,890 for the previous fiscal year and 378,772 for the year 1914. Collectors of customs, acting as shipping commissioners at ports where these officers are not established, shipped and discharged during the year 56,366 officers and men compared with 63,426 during the previous year. The duties of deputy shipping commissioners require their presence on board American ships to sign on and pay off crews when ships are about to depart or have just arrived. Ships' movements are not always determined by office hours, and to save considerable expenses their convenience must be consulted. The pay possible to deputy commissioners, under parsimonious appropriations allowed, has been quite inadequate and the practice has grown of accepting gratuities for services, which is subversive of discipline. In consequence considerable changes in the service have been necessary. The conditions which led to them can be permanently and satisfactorily remedied, however, only by appropriations sufficient to insure salaries to this service which will enable the men to live and support their families. The estimates of appropriations for the shipping commissioners and their deputies for next year have been appreciably increased for this reason. Of 321,235 officers and men shipped before shipping commissioners, 123,622 were native Americans and 32,049 naturalized Americans, in all 155,671, or a trifle over 48 per cent, compared with 50 per cent the previous year. For 10 years before the outbreak of the war the proportion of Americans shipped by shipping commissioners annually ranged from 47 to 49 per cent, and from 1915 to 1918 it fell to an average of 43 per cent, in 1919 it was 47.6 per cent, and in 1920 it was 50.5 per cent. The provision of the seamen's law which requires 65 per cent of the deck crew of cargo steamers, which make up the bulk of our merchant fleet, to be able seamen of three years' experience on deck at sea is a discouragement to young Americans desiring to follow the sea, and that period of time is not, in fact, required to qualify a young man to perform all the duties imposed on men in the deck department of modern ocean cargo steamers. Other maritime nations do not impose such a requirement on their cargo carriers, except Norway, which requires a trifle over 50 per cent of the deck crews of cargo carriers to be men of three years' service, and with its great seafaring population, for generations employed on shipboard, this requirement is, in fact, no such handicap as the requirement of 65 per cent on crews shipped in the United States. ENFORCEMENT OF THE NAVIGATION LAWS. During the fiscal year 1921 the various services of the Bureau reported 10,707 violations of the navigation laws. The violations of the various laws affecting motor boats and the rules of the road have increased from 5,722 to 7,448. This increase is due to a considerable extent to the increased activities of the Department's five inspection vessels. There is a decrease from 2,650 to 1,090 in the number of violations of the steamboat-inspection laws reported to the Depart ment. The attempts of the Department to enforce the law in regard to the documenting of yachts, securing the surrender of licenses of vessels on expiration, preventing the transportation of automobiles with the fires not extinguished and the motors running, preventing the overcrowding of passenger steamers, and preventing foreign vessels from engaging in the American fisheries, have emphasized the necessity for providing and adjusting penalties for violation of the laws covering these important subjects having to do with safety to life. and property. During the fiscal year 1921 the navigation and customs officers in the case of 11,106 trips of excursion steamers counted 5,141,099 passengers, an excess of nearly 400,000 over the previous year. The navigation inspectors made 8,960 counts of 3,224,232 passengers. The importance of this check on the loading of passenger vessels is shown by the fact that on 370 occasions it was necessary to prevent additional passengers from going on board as the limit of safety had been reached. The vessels which were thus prevented from overcrowding carried 263,570 passengers. During the year there was a material increase in the number of vessels bringing steerage passengers to the United States, the entries of such vessels increasing from 664 to 844, the number of steerage passengers brought increasing from 296,066 to 586,195 passengers. During 1919 there were but 314 entries of such vessels, with 55,603 passengers; during 1918, 442 entries, with 67,988 passengers; and in 1917, 630 entries, carrying 147,493 steerage passengers. The act of June 7, 1918, requiring that motor boats shall be numbered in the same manner that automobiles are numbered and for similar purposes has resulted up to June 30 last in the numbering of 141,006 motor boats on the navigable waters of the United States. This does not include any motor boats on the small inland lakes. Reports from the inspecting officers and other sources indicate that the law is being fairly well complied with and is resulting in material benefit in the enforcement of laws, both Federal and local, and in the collection by the Internal Revenue Bureau of taxes on this form of navigation. MOTOR BOATS. During the fiscal year 1921 the five inspection vessels of the Department continued the work of enforcing the navigation laws and the collection of internal-revenue taxes on pleasure boats and water transportation. During that period these vessels made 2,955 inspections of vessels, noted 4,400 of such vessels as being in violation of law, and reported 1,257 as having failed to pay internalrevenue taxes. These vessels made a fairly complete inspection of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and a portion of the Mississippi River and tributaries. The revenue collected from fines and taxes was in excess of the cost of the service. The total amount of the internalrevenue taxes collected it is not possible to state inasmuch as no money is collected by the officers of this Department, the failure to pay the taxes being reported to the internal-revenue collectors for action. NAVIGATION RECEIPTS. The three main sources of Federal revenue from navigation yielded during the year ended June 30, 1921, a total of $2,497,946.81, compared with $1,998,287.79 during the previous year. Tonnage duties, navigation fees, and navigation fines are collected by collectors of customs in the administration of laws by general direction of the Secretary of Commerce through the Bureau of Navigation. The receipts during the past fiscal year, compared with the receipts during the last prewar year ended June 30, 1917, were as follows: The receipts from tonnage duties the past year were the largest recorded and will probably be less during the current year. NAVIGATION APPROPRIATIONS. The appropriations for the Bureau for the past fiscal year, compared with those for the year ended June 30, 1917, were as follows: The principal increase is in the amount appropriated to enforce the navigation laws through the patrol boats and is due to employment of three additional boats released by the Navy Department after the war to the Department of Commerce, which has permitted the extension of the service to the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico and made more effective the inspections on the Atlantic coast. The next largest increase is for the shipping commissioners and deputies, 36 per cent, while the clearances of American ships in overseas trades, a fair measure of the increase of work involved, have increased from 3,000,000 tons in 1917 to 11,000,000 tons during the past fiscal year. The increase in the appropriation for the wireless service has been 33 per cent; in 1917 there were 836 American ships equipped with radio apparatus and 160 land stations, while in 1921-22 there were 2,978 American ships with wireless apparatus and 491 land stations, the increase in the number of operators licensed for the stations having kept pace with the increase in the number of stations. Since 1917 the work of adjusting and revising tonnage measurements has increased by the range of questions raised by the Shipping Board's construction and changes in construction of the fleet. 76060-21-10 Appendix I. ABSTRACT OF REPORT OF THE SUPERVISING INSPECTOR GENERAL OF THE INSPECTION SERVICE. STEAMBOAT (GEORGE ÜHLER, Supervising Inspector General.) ORGANIZATION. The following positions were embraced in the Steamboat-Inspection Service at the close of business on June 30, 1921: At Washington, D. C.: Supervising Inspector General____ Deputy Supervising Inspector General (who is Acting Supervis- Clerks.. Messenger In the Service at large: Supervising inspectors-- Local inspectors of hulls__ Local inspectors of boilers_- Assistant inspectors of hulls___ Assistant inspectors of boilers.... Clerks to boards of local inspectors_. Total__ 1 1 1 11 1 15 11 4 48 48 92 94 94 391 406 During the year one additional clerk was appointed in the Office of the Supervising Inspector General, Washington, D. C., and two positions as clerk in the office of the local inspectors at Boston, Mass., were discontinued because of the retirement of two employees in that office. STATISTICS. The force inspected and certificated 8,095 vessels, with a total gross tonnage of 16,231,001, of which 7.753 were domestic vessels, with a total gross tonnage of 13,139,030, and 342 were foreign passenger steam vessels, with a total gross tonnage of 3,091,971. Of the domestic vessels there were 6.437 steam vessels, 716 motor vessels, 15 passenger barges, and 585 seagoing barges. There was an increase of 44 in the total number of vessels inspected and an increase of ... |