EARNINGS AND THE LAY 241 



Such conditions inevitably raise the question: Why did 

 anyone sail before the mast in a whaleship? The answer, mul- 

 tifold in detail, must be sought in a double set of factors which 

 clustered about the unscrupulous practices of agents and owners 

 and the non-pecuniary motives of many whalemen. 



The ordinary shipping-agent, dealing commonly with pros- 

 pective green hands who were young and unsophisticated, was 

 notoriously shameless in his methods of persuasion. Mis- 

 representation, chicanery, fraud, mendacity in many forms — 

 these constituted his regular stock in trade. And these tools, 

 handled with an easy and enthusiastic loquacity which drew al- 

 luring pictures of stirring adventure and of exotic pleasures, 

 were sufficient to draw many credulous youths from farm and 

 shop. When the spell was finally broken by a few hours at 

 sea in a real whaling forecastle, the disillusioned victims found 

 themselves hopelessly committed to a cruise of several years' 

 duration. 



Nor did the commitments cease, in many cases, at the close 

 of a single voyage. For every whaling hand was an actual or 

 prospective pawn in a game of organized and commercialized 

 exploitation which sought to keep him constantly within its 

 toils. From the moment he stepped ashore in the home port 

 he was fawned upon, pandered to, given intoxicants, and en- 

 couraged to indulge in every form of vice and dissipation. 

 Then, when thoroughly befuddled and drunkenly heedless, 

 he was cheated, robbed, and alternately cajoled, threatened, and 

 deceived into signing an agreement to ship for another voyage. 

 "Like the flying fish, which escapes from the albacore in its na- 

 tive element, only to be pounced upon by the man-of-war bird 

 waiting to devour it, the sailor no sooner escapes the perils of 

 the deep, than he is the object of instant attack from those who 

 live by preying and feasting on his misery, on shore. On 

 coming to anchor, he exhibits the spectacle of a helpless victim, 

 bound hand and foot, and passed from the ship to the crimp, 

 from the crimp to the long-room, from the long-room to the 



Food and living conditions, too, were incomparably worse at sea than on land. 

 The discipline, brutality, monotony, and danger of whaling life had only weak 

 and emaciated counterparts on shore. And last, but by no means least, was the 

 system of exploitation which took from the average seaman the bulk of the 

 meager earnings which he did receive. 



