6 SPECIAL MAY MEETING. 
on properly and economically. We want to see that 50 per cent of the immigration comes 
here in our ships. As long as we have provided for ships, the people who come to this coun- 
try should be perfectly willing and should acquiesce in such a measure. If we allow them 
to come into the country, they ought to grant us the privilege of telling them how they can 
come into the country. 
The Naval Reserve, I believe, will be taken out of the bill. That will be left to future 
discussion. It has raised a question with the labor unions as to how this Naval Reserve 
would be used in case of a strike. I think they are justified in raising the question. 
Personally, if I could see the captain in command of the ship, I would not care so much 
about the La Follette Bill. I believe that the La Follette Bill has been more maligned and 
talked about than it deserves. The question of the cost of a crew ona ship is only a small 
percentage of the operating cost as compared with the cost of the overhead. The question 
of the additional cost caused by the La Follette Bill is not as great as the newspapers have 
made us believe. But the question of the command of the ship, after it gets outside of the 
3-mile limit, is a very important one, and one that we should see is carried out in full. 
Unfortunately, whether on account of the war, on account of conditions, or on account 
of sea lawyers, I believe they call them, the captain has not command of the ship. That is 
a very serious thing in operating ships. 1 think that some of the captains are unfortunately 
to blame. As a matter of fact, when trouble comes on the ships, I think the captain is 
mostly to blame. 
I received a report from every consul in the world, through the State Department, show- 
ing the operation of the La Follette Bill. It is on my desk in Washington. In one case 
in Rotterdam we had to find the captain along with the crew and to hoist them all on board 
in nets, because they couldn’t get on any other way. (Laughter.) That took in the chief 
engineer, all the engineers, and all of the officers. The consul took charge of the ship be- 
cause there was nobody else to take charge of it. 
In another case we found the officers acquiescing in the looting of cargo along with 
the crew. It is bad enough to have the crew looting the cargo, without the officers. One 
of them said with a great deal of pride that he had not a stitch on him that he did not get out 
of the ship; it did not cost him anything. He had pretty good neckties, better than I wear, 
and he had a better suit than I wear. He had beautiful silk stockings and a better pair of 
shoes than I wear. He said with a great deal of pride, not knowing that I was present when 
he was making the remark and that I was interested in the matter, that he had not paid 
for a stitch he had on him, and he was an officer on a ship. 
That is our trouble today. We lack the knowledge of the conditions that exist and how 
to cure them. We must learn by experience, and we in Congress hope, if we pass this bill 
and give a subsidy, that experience will come with time, and that when it does come there 
will not be any necessity for a subsidy, because I do not believe that the cost of operation 
of an American ship, if the overhead is the same, is very much different between our ships 
and a foreign ship. 
We have covered in the bill, we feel, all the possible grounds that we could find for 
giving assistance to shipping. Frankly, I will say to you that Mr. Furuseth has agreed 
with me to discuss the Seamen’s Laws, and I think we will probably get some correction in 
the Seamen’s Laws. He agrees with me that the captain ought to have charge of the ship, 
but he says the blame is on the captain, while I say it is on the sailor. So we are fighting 
that matter out, but he has agreed, after this bill has passed, that he will take up the ques- 
tion of the modification of the Navigation Laws; one thing he has agreed to is that the 
