20 OPERATING PROBLEMS OF THE AMERICAN SHIPOWNER. 
The Board of Trade regulations, however, contain certain provisions with regard to the 
manning of lifeboats and rafts. These regulations are not as stringent as the requirements of 
Section 14 of the Seamen’s Act. In the case of a British ship a certificated lifeboat man may 
take charge of a boat or raft, and this permits stewards and other petty officers to take charge 
and thereby lessens the requirements as to the number of able seamen. 
If American ships were everywhere in the majority in overseas trades, the wage differ- 
ence might not be so heavy a handicap as it is at present. It is the foreign ships that are far 
more numerous, and their managers and operators are intrenched in position as ours are not. 
In order to develop our own merchant marine, we must take a part of their present trade away 
from our enterprising foreign competitors. I need not point out that it is difficult to do this 
with ships confined to a relatively few types, maintained at substantially higher costs for 
wages and subsistence. 
There is only one way in which the result which we all seek can be accomplished, and 
that is by national assistance such as has been recommended to Congress by the American 
Steamship Owners’ Association and the United States Ship Operators’ Association in the 
representations which they have recently made to the Congress of the United States. 
As a result of the great influx of officers into our merchant marine to man the war-built 
steamers, naturally a great many inexperienced officers found employment, which, coupled 
with the unrest then existing among so-called unionized labor, reduced the standards from 
pre-war efficiency. Happily this condition is passing, and through the process of elimination 
we now have on the whole an excellent corps of deck and engineer officers that is steadily 
developing to a point of high efficiency. 
As to the engineer officers, it is a matter of regret that our inspection requirements do 
not make it obligatory that licensed engineers have an adequate shop training. It is more 
and more manifest that this is needed to reduce repair bills and maintain engine and boiler 
efficiency. 
As to the firemen in coal-burning steamers, we have a present good supply, but rela- 
tively few of them are American citizens. The present shipping subsidy bill will certainly 
contain a stiff requirement of citizenship for the unlicensed members of the crew, at least in 
the deck and engine departments, and it is a question how such a requirement can be met in 
coal-burning firerooms. On oil-burning steamers a large force of citizen firemen, most of 
them young men, is developing. 
One of our greatest present deficiencies is in masters of the requisite business training 
and experience for the overseas trade. Many excellent captains, good navigators, seamen and 
executives, have passed most of their careers in the coastwise or near-by trade and are hav- 
ing their first experiences with the purely business problems that present themselves in the 
distant ports of foreign commerce. It is desirable also that the chief mates of our foreign- 
going steamers, some of whom will soon succeed to command, should acquire as soon as 
possible a knowledge of business as it is conducted overseas. 
I am of the opinion that a shipping subsidy law should not require an American per- 
centage of more than forty, to begin with, in the deck and engine departments. It might fol- 
low in this respect the graduated increase in the proportion of able seamen as provided for 
in the La Follette seamen’s law. Such a plan as this ought to be acceptable to seafarers. 
Even assuming that the present American percentage, including officers and unlicensed men 
on our ships, is now about 55 per cent, as the latest returns of the shipping commissioners in- 
