394 INTERNATIONAL LAWS FOR THE 



very likely to enable them to stop ashore for a drunken 

 revel. Two of them will agree to keep out of the way (or 

 sometimes lots are drawn for this) when the vessel is ready 

 for sea again. The remainder of the crew agree to stand 

 by them, so that if the owner or master exerts himself, and 

 obtains other hands, the other part of the crew will refuse 

 to go with strange hands, alleging that they are not used 

 to the vessel, incompetent, &c. ; thus absentees may some- 

 times be seen watching the vessel from some coign of 

 vantage, enjoying the mortification of the owner or master, 

 who may have obtained men to supply their places, and 

 treating the whole affair as a good joke. A rejoinder to 

 this complaint may be that under subsection 7 of section 243 

 of the Merchant Shipping Act, these men are liable for 

 conspiracy to twelve weeks' hard labour, but practically it 

 is useless, as it is very difficult to prove the conspiracy 

 though well known. Under the old Act the men now used 

 as catspaws would not do this, for fear of being arrested 

 without warrant or any red-tapeism, and walked off to 

 prison ; but the abolition of the old Act by that of 1880 

 has encouraged this practice, and rendered owners practi- 

 cally powerless. The great difficulty in this question is 

 that the demand for hands is greater than the supply, and 

 the nearest industry (though there are wide differences) to 

 which it may be compared, is the hop-picking in Kent, in 

 which the hop-growers have a yearly influx of the riffraff of 

 the East of London, whom they are compelled to employ 

 for want of better hands. So it is with the fisheries, and 

 this shows how useless is the argument put forward, that 

 owners should employ a better class of men. To some sharp- 

 witted tramps and loafers this Act has opened a means of 

 living in comparative comfort for months together; for, 

 having got to know that for desertion they could only be sued 



