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Mr. HAROLDS. We did not take it to the court. At this point the question arises, Why don't we take these cases to court? Well, there is a serious question of jurisdiction. Recently a case was brought before Judge Bright in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. We did not handle that case. Judge Bright ruled that they did not have jurisdiction to review these particular decisions.

Mr. KEATING. At all?

Mr. HAROLDS. That is what he held. He held that they did not have jurisdiction to review those particular cases. I can give you the citation of those cases.

Mr. KEATING. You did not take it to the circuit court of appeals? Mr. HAROLDS. We did not handle the case. It was not taken up any further.

Mr. GRAHAM. If you have difficulty in locating the citations, then you can give them to us later.

Mr. HAROLDS. I will give you the citations later.

Now, the question of double jeopardy has been raised. You people know that a merchant seaman may be punished not once, not twice, but six times for the same offense. Let me list some of them. To begin with, not only the general maritime law but also the statute, section 701 of title 46 of the United States Code, permits a master to impose fines on the seaman on, we will call them, loggings. Some of these loggings are very substantial. Sometimes the loggings can run up to as much as forfeiture of the man's entire pay. It can be 1 day or 2 days' pay. It is almost unlimited, depending upon the severity of the offense and depending upon the language of the statute. For example, disobedience of orders carries a penalty. Failure to report for duty carries a penalty. Desertion results in forfeiture of all the man's wages and personal effects.

Mr. GRAHAM. In the main, are not the great amounts of punishment inflicted by way of pecuniary fines?

Mr. HAROLDS. Definitely. It is common practice by now for these fines to be imposed on seamen.

The second thing that may happen to men-this happened particularly during the war years-the military authorities would frequently, for the same offense for which the man was logged, haul the man up and give him a trial, nevertheless, the Articles of War cover thosein other words, they have been held subject in at least a half dozen different cases. There they could be imprisoned and fined in addition. That was the second punishment.

Then they were faced with a third possible punishment, and that is when they got back to the United States our own criminal authorities, the F. B. I., could investigate them and also get after them for the same offense and punish them criminally.

Not only that, when they got through there they could be hauled up, and frequently were, before the United States Coast Guard, which. would then try to take away, or take away, their seamen's papers for the same offense.

Apart from that, there was also the fact that they were subject to offsets by the ship operators in a civil suit if they had occasioned any expense because of what happened.

The ship operator could, in any civil suit for wages, offset the expenses which it had incurred.

Next, you would find the unions themselves in many instances imposing disciplinary action on the man for conduct unbecoming a union member because it was a discredit upon the union. They could, if they wanted to, in six different ways, discipline the man.

Mr. GRAHAM. Do you know of any actual instances where that was done?

Mr. HAROLDS. I do not know whether there were six punishments. These are possibilities. I do know of instances where there were two or three punishments.

Another complaint which we have about the Coast Guard is that they have frequently concerned themselves with a lot of petty nonsense which nobody should really be bothered with. For example, I recently had a case in which a captain in a particular port was handing out cigarettes. He was giving the licensed men Lucky Strikes and the unlicensed men Old Golds, and this particular unlicensed man, who was involved, did not like Old Golds, and did not smoke Old Golds, and he had something to say about the master, which was hardly parlor language, because he could not get Lucky Strikes instead of Old Golds, and because he used this language to the master, he and the union delegate, who presented his "beef" to the master, were both hauled up to the Coast Guard on charges of misconduct.

Fortunately, there were two passengers on the ship-one was a United States Army officer and one was a female passenger-who had occasion to notice these two men, because they would serve them here and there and explain little things to them. They voluntarily, when they heard about these things, appeared and said, "These two men was always very quiet and they did not understand why they should be presented with charges." On the other hand, they said that they had observed this master as being a man who would always fly off the handle.

We never heard anything about those charges. Little things like that, I do not think should be brought up.

I also had another similar instance. It seems that this man was a chief cook on the ship. On the preceding night the captain was entertaining a couple of ladies and had asked this man to serve steak to the two ladies. It was way after hours and would, apparently, take a long time to defrost the steak. By the time the whole proceeding would have been accomplished, it would have been very late. So, the man had refused to serve the steaks to the lady friends.

The next morning the captain met this man going along the alleyway and said to him, in effect, "Why aren't you serving breakfast to the crew?" This man said, "The second cook does that and it is my job to do the butchering."

The captain said, "You should serve breakfast to the crew."

He said, "There is a man doing that work and I have a different job to do."

The captain said, "Well, you refuse to do it?"

Well, he called the mate and had the man confined. That man was brought up on charges by the Coast Guard and if I recall correctly he was admonished by them for it.

That is just another example of the pettiness of some of the things. which they have been concerning themselves with, causing annoyance

to the seamen and causing trouble all around. It takes up a lot of time and no good comes of it one way or the other.

Mr. KEATING. Are you on retainer?

Mr. HAROLDS. We are on retainer from the National Maritime Union. I suppose these are personal cases but frequently someone from the union will call us up and say so and so is in trouble; will you go down and help them out? We go down and do what we can.

I would like to mention two other cases, if you have the time. Mr. GRAHAM. I would like to interrupt just a moment. In a few minutes the warning bell will ring for us to get to the House Chamber. I must make a report today at 12 o'clock. If the other members wish to continue the hearing we will go right on. We want to accommodate you and we do not want you to have to come back.

Mr. HAROLDS. Whatever you say.

Mr. GRAHAM. If you gentlemen will excuse me, hearing and make my report.

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For the benefit of those who are here, we will continue these hearings next Monday morning at 10 o'clock.

Mr. HAROLDS. I should like to mention two other cases that I have had. There were two brothers by the name of Colazzo who were employed on the S. S. Albert M. Boe, and, according to the log book these two gentlemen were accused of participating in a theft of the ship's linen while the ship was at port in Chile.

I might add that at the request of the captain these two men were turned over to the local authorities in Chile, were held incommunicado for a period of about 18 days, and were held there without any hearing for 212 months in the prison. Finally, they were able to have their relatives here send them $50 apiece for bail. That is how serious the charges were. They were released on bail.

One of the seamen, after pounding the beat there and being unable to obtain employment, stowed away on a ship and came back. The other seaman remained, still waiting for his trial, because these two chaps wanted to have their names cleared. The seaman who came back retained me to represent him. After I had spoken with him, I felt that a suit should be filed against the steamship company. I filed such a suit, which went to trial. We tried the case before a judge without a jury in the city court of New York County. The court, in very strong language, denounced the method of making log-book entries, denounced his leaving the men in this foreign port, found that the charges of theft of linen were not proven, and awarded the seamen $3,000, which is the jurisdictional limit of that court.

After that brother who had been down there and who had waited there for over a year for a trial, without ever getting it, was able to get back, through the offices of the United States consul, no sooner did he get back than the Coast Guard at New York immediately pounced upon him, presented him with a copy of charges, and one of the very charges is theft of the ship's linen in Chile.

They did not set down any trial date, because at the present time, T understand, they do not have anyone to hear these particular cases. But, just as soon as they will have the resources to proceed with the case, they will proceed with that case and, mind you, on the basis solely of the log-book entry, they can proceed to punish that man and revoke his papers forever. They do not have to prosecute the captain

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I would not be able to cross-examine the captain at the Coast Guard hearing, as I did at the trial, where I was able to show that the captain's testimony was false in many respects, and that his log-book entries were inaccurate and did not reflect the true state of affairs. And yet, on the basis of the log-book entry, this man Colazzo, the brother, may have his papers revoked.

Mr. KEATING. Why don't you bring an action for this other Colazzo? Mr. HAROLDS. I have already commenced that.

Mr. KEATING. If you can get that to trial before the other, you may be able to get some evidence you can use in defense in the Coast Guard proceedings.

Mr. HAROLDS. Our calendar is so far behind that I am afraid that that could not possibly be tried before the Coast Guard matter comes up. It may happen differently, I hope.

The last case I want to mention is a case which involved the S. S. Henry Hadley. I spent a lot of time on this case, and went up on appeal, and Mr. Harrison, who is present here today, wrote the decision on appeal affirming the order of the hearing officer below.

I want to give you the facts of this case, more or less, founded on the appeal, and show you to what lengths they will go in order not to reverse themselves and in order to uphold the authority of a master over seamen, even when the master is 100 percent wrong and the seamen are apparently 100 percent right.

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This entire incident, I may say, took place at the end of the war. There is no war situation involved here. The Henry Hadley signed on a crew, under shipping articles, which called for a voyage which was to proceed to South America and then to Rotterdam, Holland, and then to other ports. This ship did go to South America, but from South America it did not go to Rotterdam, Holland, as called for by the shipping articles. Instead it went elsewhere.

On appeal they agreed with us, Mr. Harrison agreed that this was a deviation from the articles.

Of course, where there is deviation from the articles, the contract is at an end, if the seamen want to declare it as such. These seamen did not quit then and there, but what they did before the ship deviated, when they learned that it was going to deviate, they went to the United States consul in Buenos Aires and said, "We understand the ship is going to deviate." The consul said, “I do not regard that as deviation." He refused to act. You gentlemen may have had called to your attention on many occasions that seamen also have complaints. about United States consulate officers because the statute is so worded that consulates shall discount insubordination. The result is that consuls have got the idea that any disobedience or any complaints by seamen against masters is disobedience and it has to be a pretty flagrant case before they involve themselves. Of course, as a usual thing, the members of the United States consulate are usually people with a background of money and do not realize the circumstances of the

seamen.

At any rate, the consul said, "You continue with the ship." They cooperated with the ship. In other words, they continued with the ship. Eventually they got to a port in Durban. Meanwhile, food stores were running low. They had no more salt. As a matter of fact, they started using salt water for cooking purposes. They had

to borrow flour from a sister ship in Durban and even this flour was found to have weevils in it. There were other shortages in meats. The captain did order some other stores. He ordered huge quantities, and apparently the company paid for huge quantities, which the Coast Guard found, on appeal, were never delivered aboard ship, which is part of the proof we offered in the case.

At any rate, while they were in this port of Durban, these seamen went to the consul there. They did not walk off the ship and quit. They went to the consul again. They said that there was a deviation, No. 1, and they said, that, "We do not have all the food stores we are entitled to by law. How about conducting a survey of all of this?" The consul admitted in his report, which was finally made one of the exhibits in the case, that these requests were made of him and that he merely conducted a cursory examination. He did not know very much about it and did not ask anyone else about it. He took the captain's word when the captain showed him the bill of what was ordered as that being delivered. At any rate, the consul would not give the seamen relief. At about that point the seamen, apparently, through their delegate, announced their intention that they did not intend to depart from that port unless these conditions were rectified or until they obtained a proper survey.

At that point the local police were called aboard. The local police questioned the individual seamen. They said, "How about this?"

I might add that all of these men were called upon from work for the interrogation. There had never been any refusal to obey any direct order. All of the officers, including the master, were found never to give a direct order to the men to let go the lines or anything of that sort. When they were called up by the policemen, the men testified, "We have been working; we have not refused to work, but we do feel some settlement should be made of our dispute."

The upshot was that these men were taken ashore and thrown in a local prison for 5 days and kept there at hard labor until the Maritime Union sent a telegram to them saying, "Go back to the ship and we will straighten it out when you get home," which was done.

When they came back there was the Coast Guard, which met them with two charges, serious charges. One was refusal to obey the captain's order, and the other was their conspiracy to refuse to obey the captain's order, both charges of a nuisance nature.

Mr. KEATING. Was it substantially the entire crew?

Mr. HAROLDS. Substantially the entire crew of the unlicensed personnel.

The hearing lasted about 10 days and we proved the shortages. The officers themselves testified as to the inadequacy of food on that occasion. They just could not deny it. Everyone admitted the inadequacy of the food. A new steward, who had been abroad, and who was an alien, and who was not a member of the union, testified as to the shortages of food.

Mr. KEATING. Is that food a statutory matter?

Mr. HAROLDS. Food is a statutory matter, and the minimum required by the statute-I might say that seamen generally receive more than required by statute. Even the minimum required by the statute, in some instances, was not aboard that ship. The hearing officer who heard that case dismissed the conspiracy charge, at my request, but

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