16 OPERATING PROBLEMS OF THE AMERICAN SHIPOWNER. 
will carry out its promised policy of making the good steamers of the government-owned fleet 
available to purchasers at world market prices. There is still the handicap of higher cost 
crews. American shipboard wages have historically been from 30 to 40 per cent above Brit- 
ish shipboard wages, and it is estimated at the present time that British wages are about 15 
per cent above Scandinavian. This is a handicap which in my judgment, and I believe in 
the judgment of virtually all practical owners and operators, can be overcome only by national 
assistance. 
A great deal is being carelessly said about the higher “efficiency” and “economy” of 
American officers and men. It is not to be denied that many years ago, in the heyday of 
our wooden-built merchant marine, there wasa higher efficiency in American ocean ships 
than elsewhere, generally speaking. Indeed, this superiority was so manifest that it was freely 
acknowledged by our competitors themselves. But it must not be forgotten that this was an 
efficiency that had gradually been attained through many years of effort and experience. 
Such efficiency cannot be secured overnight or in a few months or a few years. It is a 
long, hard path our predecessors had to travel from the humble beginnings of our national 
merchant marine in 1789 up to the incomparable smartness of the celebrated packets and 
clippers of the thirties, forties and fifties of the nineteenth century. 
It would be idle to pretend that any such relative efficiency has been attained in the 
brief period of the years between 1915 and 1922. Though we have in our ships many of the 
best officers in the world, our officers as a whole and on the average fall short of the experi- 
ence of their European competitors. This is even more signally true of our crews. This is 
a handicap, however, which time itself will cure; in fact, any disparity on this point between 
Europeans and ourselves is even now rapidly lessening. I am one of those who believe that, 
given a fair chance, American officers and crews will gradually reestablish the supremacy 
which in the last century was theirs as the most capable men of their calling in the world. 
The wage difference between American and British ships is somewhat less now than it 
has been of recent years, and must be regarded as temporary due to the abnormal condition of 
world shipping, but it is still a wide difference, as will be demonstrated by the comparison 
of the costs of wages and subsistence of an American and a British cargo steamer of 3,500 
gross tons, and the wages and subsistence of an American and a British cargo steamer of 
6,000 gross tons, shown in the tables on pages 17 and 18. 
In this comparison a similar number of crew in each vessel has been used, but it 
is a generally accepted fact that American vessels carry a greater number in the crew than do 
foreign vessels. This difference is more especially to be found in the “tramp,” coastal or 
short-voyage American steamers as compared with the foreign vessels; while in the case of 
the passenger liners or cargo liners the British manning scale more nearly approximates our 
own. On the other hand, the manning scale of Continental European ships will generally 
be found to be less than the British. 
During and after the war an unusually large number of men were carried in our ships, 
because of the Shipping Board’s manning policy in its endeavor to train the inexperienced 
recruits who came into the service of the merchant marine during the war. In recent years, 
however, with the inevitable reduction to a normal basis, leaders of seagoing unions have 
endeavored to make it appear that our vessels carry a less number in crew than foreign 
vessels. Recourse to the records of the Customs Department will, I am sure, clearly demon- 
strate that in the case of like ships in the same trade the manning schedule on American ves- 
sels will be found to be no less, but more often will be found to be higher, except in the 
case of vessels under foreign flags manned with the cheaper Asiatic labor, on which, how- 
