LA FOLLETTE SEAMEN'S ACT GAINS GROUND
La Follette Seamen's Act Gains Ground IT MAY BE of interest to the readers of La Toilette's to get some first-hand and real information about the progress made by the ideas which aroused the...
...It has not come yet because the law has had but little chance, but it is going to come and all the efforts that are being made to repeal it or to so hamstring it as to make it inoperative have so far failed and there is no doubt that it will fail in the future, because "freedom's soul goes marching on...
...fs step fry step retreating before the idea that the seaman has as good a right to personal freedom as other men...
...The law was not adopted there until England had secured control of the sea...
...The publicity is helping some...
...Nearly every Government, urged no doubt by the shipowners, sent their protests to the United States against the passage of this bill, which nevertheless became law...
...Since the law passed here, the Scandinavian countries have gone half way...
...Offenses against the Master and Servant Law may be punished or condoned by the master...
...Imprisonment for desertion—failure to carry out the contract to labor—has been abolished...
...Even in France this question is being discussed, notwithstanding the fact that the French seamen belong to the State...
...The real force comes from education and the growing understanding and is to be found in Western Europe...
...After some six centuries of suffering under the Master and Servant Law, the seamen had few words to say when one country struck the shackles off and made its seamen free...
...The German Reichstag has for some time been discussing the question of a new law with imprisonment cut out dealing with master and servant, and the German seamen—at least some of them and the number is growing—are insisting that this must also apply to them...
...In Belgium- they have had the question of seamen's personal rights while in harborr under discussion for some time, and while no action so far as I know has yet been taken, the idea that the Master and Servant Law, enacted in the interest of the employer, must be so changed that its violation shall come within the jurisdiction of the civil courts and that all imprisonments for its violation when not done in such a way as to endanger life must be abolished...
...With reference to the Labor Office of the League of Nations, the purposes which were declared at its formation and the system of its organization make it practically impossible for the Labor Office to lead in this struggle...
...They only went half way...
...The seamen of Europe could not understand...
...With reference to the other aspect of the law, that it would, when enacted and enforced, equalize the wage cost of operating foreign and American ships, the years that have passed have furnished ample testimony that the law enforced will do just what its promoters believed that it would do...
...There is not now in England any law under which refusal to continue to labor as a seaman in England or within the British Isles can be punished by imprisonment, though statutes provide for imprisonment when it is done in a foreign harbor, or in a harbor of one of the Colonies...
...There is filtering through the official mind an idea that compulsory labor for private benefit is after all involuntary servitude and as such to be condemmed...
...So much for Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden...
...So you will see that "His soul goes marching on...
...there must be something wrong with it, because it was too good to be true, and yet the idea has been moving along and the Master and Servant Law passed to furnish continuous labor in harbor and stuck onto the Maritime Law, passed to promote safety at sea...
...England was the last nation to adopt penal servitude for violation of a contract to labor in harbor...
...Practically none of the provisions of this Act have been enforced, except such as the seamen could enforce by application to the courts...
...Furuseth has recently returned from Europe where he attended the Geneva I^bor Conference and visited a number of Capitals where he made first hand observations of the Ufwrs concerning seamen, violation should not be visited by imprisonment...
...The offenses are not offenses against the public...
...If all of the sections of the law were given the sympathetic enforcement to which highly remedial legislation is entitled, we should now have an equalization of the wages of practically all the countries in Europe, with Japan thrown in...
...In Eastern Europe, according to the best information obtainable, it is moving the other way...
...It is not a law in the interest of the public...
...The right to quit work in a safe harbor has been enforced and it ha.-> substantially equalized the wages of England, Holland and the Scandinavian countries with the wages of the United States, and it has increased the wages of the Japanese seamen three times...
...There are some hopeful prospects that it will...
...because the law left it possible to take the man on board the vessel against his will and compel him to continue to labor...
...In Holland a Commission has been sitting for some years to reconstruct the Maritime law of that ancient maritime nation, and the Commission has reported that no criminal penalty shall attach to the breaking of a contract to labor on a vessel, unless such breach is likely to result in danger to the lives of other persons and incidentally to the loss of the vessel...
...La Follette Seamen's Act Gains Ground IT MAY BE of interest to the readers of La Toilette's to get some first-hand and real information about the progress made by the ideas which aroused the intense opposition to the La Follette Seamen's Act...
...Its Mr...
...The Master and Servant Law, as applicable on shore, has been repealed by decree, as a result of the revolution in Germany...
...but against this the seamen are now protesting not only with seriousness but with hope...
...they could not believe it...
Vol. 19 • January 1927 • No. 1
