220 



CONGRESS. (PROTECTION OF AMERICAN SEAMEN.) 



urv and Commissioner of Navigation may adopt. 

 It "allows the allotment of a sailor's wages, how- 

 ever, to be paid to his family, father, mother, 

 brother, sister, or wife, as the sailor may desig- 

 nate, for any purpose whatever for the support 

 of those who are dependent upon him while ab- 

 sent upon the voyage. These are, briefly, the 

 provisions in regard to allotment. 



" The present law allows imprisonment of the 

 sailor who may desert, where he has shipped on 

 a vessel ; and if he does not render himself upon 

 the vessel before the vessel sails, he is liable to 

 imprisonment, and so on in every place where 

 the vessel calls he is liable to imprisonment for 

 a violation of his contract. This bill does away 

 with all imprisonment for desertion except in one 

 case, and that is where a vessel is in a foreign 

 port and the sailor deserts. In that case, in the 

 discretion of the court, he may be imprisoned 

 not to exceed one month. I should have liked 

 the bill better if that provision had been stricken 

 out entirely, but hesitated to ask an amendment 

 of the statute for fear the bill might meet the 

 same fate that the bill met in a former Congress, 

 because I was informed on all hands that the 

 sailors and the vessel owners had agreed upon 

 that, in view of some other concession. I am 

 told that practically a seaman is seldom impris- 

 oned because of desertion. The vessel owners 

 claim that they want this clause retained, in 

 order to discourage desertion in foreign ports, and 

 the reason for that is because when a sailor de- 

 serts a vessel in a foreign port it would cause 

 great delay in the prosecution of the voyage and 

 great damage and disappointment to the people 

 who are to receive the cargo, and perhaps en- 

 danger the lives of those who had shipped upon 

 the voyage. 



" Another provision has been made in the bill 

 that compels the master, whenever there is a 

 desertion or loss of seamen by desertion or by 

 casualty, to ship the full complement of seamen, 

 and seamen of the same class as those whose 

 places he employs them to fill. So that the vessel 

 shall never be without the full complement of 

 sailors as was originally arranged by the ship- 

 ping commissioner, an officer of the United States. 

 The present law provides a scale of provisions 

 which is perhaps adequate, if it is always lived 

 up to. But the law provides that the sailor may 

 agree in his contract of shipping to waive cer- 

 tain portions of the scale of provisions, or any 

 portion of it, and accept a substitute. It is 

 claimed, and without doubt is true, that this 

 provision gives rise to many abuses, because the 

 sailor, being anxious for a job and perhaps un- 

 able longer to pay his board, is often forced to 

 make a contract which gives him an insufficient 

 scale of provisions for the voyage, and results 

 often in disease and sometimes in the death of 

 the sailor. 



" This bill not only provides a full scale of pro- 

 visions, but it was a scale adopted after careful 

 study and examination, on the recommendation 

 of the surgeon general of the Navy Department 

 and the surgeon general of the Marine Hospital, 

 and, I believe, one other expert, and they said, 

 after they had arranged this scale, that if it was 

 provided for the sailors it would virtually abolish 

 scurvy and kindred diseases. 



" The bill also provides that the master shall 

 take provisions and supply this scale for the 

 entire voyage when he starts out. It does not 

 leave it to the contract with the sailor; he can 

 not be cheated out of it. It does provide that 

 a few items may be dispensed with; but if they 

 are, certain others must be provided equally good, 



and which may be arranged by agreement, but 

 they must have the provisions in this scale. If 

 any member desires to examine this scale he will 

 find a large bill of fare on page 21 of the bill. It 

 seems to me ample and liberal. So that that 

 abuse will be entirely abolished if this bill is- 

 passed. 



" Years ago Congress passed a law saying sub- 

 stantially that flogging on board vessels is abol- 

 ished. This bill goes farther than that. It not 

 only abolishes flogging, but it provides a very 

 severe and suitable punishment for the violation 

 of the law if any master of a vessel, or the mate 

 of a vessel, seeks to indulge in the pastime of 

 flogging the sailor on his voyage. The law now 

 is without penalty. This bill provides an ade- 

 quate penalty for the violation of that law r . There 

 are other minor provisions in the bill, all of which 

 go to improve the condition of the sailor and to 

 provide for the safety of the vessel. I think that 

 the bill as it now stands is an immense advance 

 over the present law, and is in the direction of 

 all the reforms that have been advocated in the 

 last dozen years in the House. 



" I am only anxious that it shall speedily be- 

 come a law, and I should regret very much if the 

 House should amend the bill, not because I am 

 not in sympathy with some of the amendments, 

 and not that I would not like to see it made ex- 

 actly like the bill that went from the House at 

 the last Congress, but because the fear that if 

 amendments go into the bill, and it goes to the 

 Senate, it will meet the fate of the bill in the 

 last Congress, ' and thus these immense advan- 

 tages be lost to our sailors." 



Mr. Handy, of Delaware, opposed certain fea- 

 tures of the measure, and submitted amendments 

 which were not adopted. He said: 



" Mr. Speaker, unquestionably, as the gentle- 

 man from New York has informed the House, this, 

 bill, even as it stands, would, if passed, be a vast 

 improvement over the present law; yet there are 

 at least two features of it which are so far from 

 what is just and right that the House should 

 amend the bill and send it back to the Senate for- 

 concurrence. 



" One of these features the gentleman [Mr. 

 Payne] has referred to. It is the feature that 

 provides imprisonment of a seaman for the vio- 

 lation of a civil contract. The seaman enters 

 into a contract with the master of a ship to 

 render personal service on a voyage at sea, and 

 then at a foreign port for some reason sufficient, 

 to the seaman, perchance because of ill treatment 

 on the voyage, he wishes to leave. 



"If he does leave he has, of course, violated 

 his civil contract, and yet who shall say that 

 he has committed any crime? He has simply 

 given up his job. He has refused to continue his 

 labor. He has quit work. If you force him to 

 continue by fines and penalties the work he de- 

 sires to leave, you reduce him to a condition of 

 involuntary servitude. He becomes more slave 

 than freeman. Surely such a violation of a con* 

 tract for personal service in the case of any man 

 not a seaman would be a violation to be made 

 right by money damages. Yet this bill provides 

 for the imprisonment of the seaman. 



"The master of the ship can, as a matter of 

 practice, get rid of his seamen at any port. He 

 can make life so unbearable for the seamen 

 aboard ship that they will for the sake of com- 

 fort and decency of life be only too glad to leave 

 the ship. When the master of a ship in a foreign 

 port wants to get rid of his crew, and thereby 

 terminate the contract from his side, he does 

 not as a usual thing hesitate to do it. He makes 



