tirely of military personnel who are military-minded, who conduct their hearings and cases in the manner boards, and that they are not, therefore, the right personnel to review any cases of inefficiency or any violations.

Now, I have heard it said repeatedly that there are infractions of discipline today more so than ever, that discipline aboard merchant marine ships is at the lowest ebb possible. I deny that emphatically. I would request the committee, through their resources, to get the statistics from any city in the United States, preferably a seaport city of approximately 100,000 people, as in comparison with 100,000 men actually engaged and earning their livelihood at sea, and break down the civilian infractions and violations of the law as in comparison with the merchant marine violations.

I think you would find that the activities of the men in the merchant marine are no better or no worse than any civilians ashore, because they are civilians, and that we have ample civil laws for prosecution of any narcotic addicts, any murderers, anyone who attempts to violate any of our civil laws, because the master is responsible for the administration of all civil laws on the high seas.

Now, we bring up this question of inefficiency. Let us agree that during the war when men were hastily and quickly trained and rapidly licensed, far in excess of the experience called for-we have had cases where during the war we have had ship masters at the age of 22, 23, and so forth. That is something that was never heard of in the normal course of procedure. These men were issued licenses as an expedient and I am very happy and proud to say that they distinguished themselves, when you think of the job they did in merchant ships on the beachheads, the job they did in convoy, in handling their vessels, the courage and the literal guts that they had-it is commendable, and they are a fine bunch of American boys.

Now, there are certain men who were licensed because of experience who received the command because of the shortage of trained personnel. These men are rapidly being weeded out of the industry. Do you think, gentlemen, for one minute, that any steamship master that was guilty of a violation, such as has been described by Congressman Buck, can get another command? Do you think that the steamship company would not report to the bonding company? Every shipmaster is bonded. They would report that this man is a bad risk and the bonding company will not bond him, and, therefore, the company could not possibly employ him.

Do you think any officer can apply for a job with any steamship company without presenting his background and his record that is checked upon, with the result that no company would employ a man who has a bad record. It is not a shortage situation existing where inefficient people are forced on a company.

There is no union, and I say that without qualification, that can force any steamship company to take an officer that is not satisfactory to them. The man is punished in many ways, by loss of employment, and they are being weeded out of the industry very, very rapidly.

Now, a very bad feature of this Coast Guard situation, because of the type of hearings they have conducted, is this: The examiners, the hearing officers, and very frequently, the defense counsel are Coast Guard officers. We can produce positive cases where a boarding officer

!

has boarded a vessel and has gone down in the crew's quarters and wanted to know if any of the crew had any charges against the officer or vice versa, and where they go up in the bridge and ask the officers if they have any charges against the crew. They have found men's records in the logbook showing that they have been absent without leave. They are subpenaed for a hearing and they are advised that they should not go to their union and get defense counsel, that the Coast Guard would provide counsel, and that they would probably get off a whole lot better.

A ship master in the true sense of the word works many years to get his command. He has a responsible position, and it is a hazardous occupation where new situations arise every day. It is a business you learn every day until you die. It is a tragic thing to think that a shipmaster who has been at sea for 20 or 30 years, who has been unfortunate enough to have a grounding or collision or an accident aboard his ship, has to be subjected to interrogation, cross-examination, by one who is at least not equal in experience, such as a lieutenant (junior grade) or an ensign who has a fine legal background but whose total service at sea has been the command of an LST. We had one hearing unit in one of our largest seaports where the officer in charge spent his entire service during the war in command of a large steel desk, who knew nothing about actual life at sea. Another very bad feature of the hearing unit, as set up in the Coast Guard, is that a man has only one right of appeal and then only to the Coast Guard Commandant. He cannot have a review of the facts or evidence. He cannot take it outside to the courts except if there is a question of law involved. According to the testimony of Congressman Latham, there have been only four cases out of 30,000 where men had any background at all to take a case outside in the courts at law. The men just have no chance.

I have sat in myself as witness, as defense counsel, advisor to some of our brothers in the union, who have been on trial. What went on was disgusting. The dignity of the shipmaster has been lowered by the way the Coast Guard conducts the trial, by the questions he is asked, the way he is subjected to these things. The condemnation of one bad shipmaster condemns the entire fraternity. We are very much opposed to it.

Another very, very bad feature, and I think you gentlemen will agree, is one of double jeopardy. Now, we do not like to have aboard our ships an habitual drunk. On the other hand, we do not believe we have any jurisdiction over what they do at shore on their own time. Some of them come aboard with a hang-over, but, then, there are lots of men that come to their offices with a hang-over. There are lots of steamship executives that come to their office with a hang

over.

I know that the majority of steamship companies are very meticulous about the hiring of their personnel.

I see a man who I respect greatly for his long years of service here, Captain Cummins, who is marine superintendent for one of our larg est American steamship companies. I discussed a case with him not so long ago involving a very close friend of mine, a shipmaster who had a grounding. That man was taken off a ship; he was put on the beach; he was well disciplined. The company will not discharge him.

They will punish him severely enough to make him realize that he will not have such an accident again, and he will not be responsible for such inefficiency. I am sure that they will have the loyalty and services of a very good man because of that treatment. By the same token, I subscribe that all other steamship companies are interested in building up responsible reliable personnel. They do not have to go to the street corners and whistle for the fellow who has had a narcotic charge against him.

Now, we have another case. It has been my pleasure to observe by the unlicensed unions are doing in an educational program, and by a realistic and practical approach to it, in disciplining their own members.

I can refer you to an editorial in one of the New York newspapers last week referring to one unlicensed union that take pleasure in putting the men who get drunk and miss watches and things like that, in the "social register" for 99 years. By that I mean that they are suspended from membership for 99 years. With the high degree of organization in the maritime industry today, these men will not be able to get employment except, possibly, on a Panamanian vessel or Greek flag vessel, where you will find a far lower degree of responsibility, efficiency and conduct.

The unions take a position that if a man needs disciplining, they should be given the first opportunity to do it, and believe me, I think you will agree, if the union disciplines a man, they will do it far more thoroughly and far more effectively than any other outside organization. They are practical men themselves. They know when a fellow lays in his bunk for two or three watches and the rest of the men on the watch have to do double duty. They do not like it and they are not going to stand for it. They are not going to admonish him or put him on probation for 30 or 60 days. They are going to give him the business.

Now, a few specific cases were brought out. A case of the steamship Manrope Knot was brought out. I lived with that problem from the first day it started. I happened to be with one of the companies we enjoy the very best relations, a very large fleet owner, and with whom we realistically attack any problem that comes up, and try to meet it before it becomes serious. The Manrope Knot happened to be a ship that was lying at anchor in a port of Spain for 17 days because they did not have a berth for it. There was a congestion of shipping. It was a very heavily crowded harbor and the company had no desire to push the ship into a berth.

The crew demanded that the vessel be fumigated. The company agreed that they do not expect their men to live with cockroaches and bedbugs, so they fumigated it. Three or four days later, they found the job of fumigation was ineffective and they fumigated it a second time. Almost a week later, they found the job of disinfection and exterminating had not been thorough. It was done a third time.

Well, the men had a lot of liberty, a lot of time ashore, day after day in a port where the town is wide open. Liquor is very inexpensive, comparatively, for the American dollar, and many of the other things that sailors do in foreign ports. Therefore, there was bound to be some difficulties.

Now, one of the officers in the vessel happened to be an individual with a long Communist background. We take second place to no

organization in America when it comes to fighting the Communist on the waterfront. We will continue to do so and always will. The individual was an officer on this ship who stirred up the crew to support him. Imagine an officer enlisting the support of a crew to have a master removed from the vessel. I can assure you that both the officer involved and the crew involved were well disciplined by the respective unions, ourselves and the unlicensed union. Now, that brings up another point. During the war, I had the privilege, and I consider it as such, of serving in the United States Maritime Service in the training organization. I was executive officer in an officer candidate school. These men were usually licensed by examinations, formulated and conducted by the United States Coast Guard. We did the very best job we possibly could. We were told that the Maritime Commission would have a thousand ships afloat by a certain date and they needed 5,000 officers. There was very good cooperation on both sides. The officers were provided.

Now, as executive officer, I had a little black book in which I had the name furnished to me, by the other Government agencies, of every seaman who attended the officer candidate school with a Communist or subversive background. There were not many. The reason I had that information is that we could use it, from time to time. If an old-time seaman with a good background of experience was up for disciplining for being overleave for a few hours, he would appear before one of us, usually myself and get a darn good bawling out and warned not to do it again. This was a serious business that they had to study and work hard and get back to sea as a licensed officer. But, if one of the Communists whose name was in my little black book appeared on the same violation, I would say, "Mr.—, you know the law, you know the rules and regulations, you are restricted at the base for 2 months, no liberty." He quit. Or if he was very circumspect about his conduct, and was not guilty of any infractions or violations, then we carefully screened his scholastic record on the hopes that we could dump him, literally, out of the school because of failure in grades. But, even then many of the known Communists got licenses and became officers. It was a minority, true, but it is the minority that has caused these headaches.

The Coast Guard never did anything about it. They were in better position than we were to nip these people right at the start. To this day they have not done anything about it.

Now, prior to the war, before the Coast Guard was given the func tions of the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation, trials and hearings involving various degrees of offenses, were conducted by the various boards set up within the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation. They were called A Board, B Board, and C Board. The Coast Guard has claimed that there is a huge backlog of cases. I doubt very seriously whether this huge backlog of cases would come under the heading of the serious offenses that would go to the highest board, known as the C Board. I believe that they would come within the classification of A and B. Some of them, we agree, are serious. We say it should be administered by civilians within a civilian organization who are not military minded.

When, under the Second War Powers Act, the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation was turned over to the Navy and, in turn,

to the Coast Guard, as a purely important war measure, we were in accord with it. We were perfectly willing to give up our rights as civilians in an effort to aid in our winning of the war. Every other Federal agency which received, as a part of the war, certain civilian functions, have returned those functions to civilian authority, but today the only one that remains in the picture is the Coast Guard. Now, we have another serious matter in the Coast Guard in the picture. They must always be cognizant of one important thing. When a man is on trial for inefficiency or for failure to do his job, as his license calls for, the Coast Guard is just as much on trial as the individual, because they issued the license, and I would like to see some organization other than the one who issued the license, because if they feel so inclined, in covering up something, they can very easily do it. Whereas, an outside organization would not have any such interest.

I can recall a few cases-I could submit hundreds of them, but I will point out one-a case involving a shipmaster who had a grounding in a port in Italy. We appeared in his behalf before the Coast Guard hearing unit. He had counsel there and the prosecutor demanded that he take the stand for cross-examination to defend himself. His counsel and the hearing officer said, "You cannot put that man on the stand to testify against himself." The prosecutor said, "Oh, I am going to get him on the stand. We are going to insist upon it. We have questions to ask him." The hearing officer said, "You had plenty of time to examine him in the preliminary investigation." A recess was held. It seems that after lunch, the pressure had been put on this hearing-unit officer who was himself a former merchant marine master and in a very quick, hurried manner, the case was practically closed. So they considered him negligent and suspended his license for 30 days. We hold that such a thing is a travesty upon justice.

The accident to this vessel cost several hundred thousand dollars to repair. It practically tore the bottom out of it. If he was negligent, if we was wrong, in the accident, then a 30-day suspension is a travesty upon justice. It is absolutely not any punishment to fit the bill. On the other hand, if he was innocent, and we contended that he was, then he should be completely exonerated and told to go away. He was then told he had the right of appeal. He discussed it with his wife. The man was very tired from the war. He said, "I need a rest. What is 30 days' suspension? I will take a vacation and it will all be over by the time I get back. The company is not holding anything against me. The company does not say I am at fault. The company is not going to punish me with loss of employment and loss of a job."

But, the Coast Guard will.

We do not want any repetition of any such thing, gentlemen. As I say, if possible, compare the conduct record of the merchant marine in point of numbers with the conduct record of any other city. Take a seaport city, find out how many felonies they have, how many misdemeanors, how many violations of various types of law, and I think you will find that in comparison the conduct record of the merchant marine is far superior because of the amount of self-discipline.

In the military organizations, they give an order and it is obeyed immediately; it is not questioned. In the merchant marine it might