IS THE LA FOLLETTE SEAMEN'S ACT CLASS LEGISLATION?
Is the La Follette Seamen's Act Class Legislation? '"Only politics, as represented in class legislation, like the La Follette Seamen's Law, will long keep unionism alive."—Wall Street...
...Scurvy and beri-beri have disappeared from under those flags since the passage of those laws...
...This was done 50 years after the fugitive slave law had been abolished in the United States...
...Is this class legislation...
...The Seaman's Act, in the interest of the traveling public, took the provisions of foreign nations as to skill, and made them applicable to American vessels and to all other vessels leaving ports of the United States...
...There was no such American Law, except that the vessel owner was exempt :rom paying tonnage taxes on the space, six feet high, six feet long, and two feet wide per man (high enough to stand in, long enough to lie down in and wide enough for a man's shoulders),—"a little too large for a coffin, not large enough for a grave," as expressed by Senator Gallinger...
...The American ship was known as the "blood tub of the ocean...
...England, doing 67V6 per cent of the world's carrying trade, had a yearly average of 60 cases of scurvy and beri-beri...
...American vessels doing about 8 per cent of the world's carrying trade had a yearly average of 37 cases of scurvy and beri-beri for more than 20 years prior to the passage of the Seaman's Act...
...The La Follette act provided for safety to the traveling public on American vessels leaving the United States and made the same laws applicable to foreign vessels leaving the United States...
...Was the abolition of that condition in American vessels class legislation...
...The present scale for American vessels was adopted in 1898 and was amended and completed in 1915, in the Seaman's Act...
...The ship owners have disregarded every phase of the Seaman's Act until compelled by the courts to obey, and this applies only to those parts of the act where the seamen themselves have an opportunity to go into the courts for redress...
...Is this class legislation...
...The seaman was the last one to get them...
...Wall Street Journal...
...Under the new law these are furnished...
...In this, the shipowners have been aided and abetted by the government departments and the shipping board...
...The new English scale of provisions for seamen was adopted in 1906...
...American ships were permtted to go to sea with men, none of whom, exclusive of licensed officers, had ever been to sea before...
...Is that class legislation...
...THE LA FOLLETTE Seaman's Act repealed the imprisonment feature of the master and servant law as applied to seamen 50 years after it had been abolished as applied to everybody else...
...In this class legislation...
...Is this class legislation...
...In this class legislation...
...The seaman, naturally, had to be fed but he was compelled to carry his own mess, gear-spoon, knife and fork, plate and drinking cup...
...Every nation has some provision specifying the space in which the seaman was to live, eat and sleep when off duty...
...Under treaties between the United States and some 30 other nations it was mutually agreed that seamen who broke their contract to labor, while the vessel was in a safe harbor, were to be pursued from state to state, arrested, detained and surrendered back to those to whom they owed service or labor...
...They are furnished to everyone else, prisoners included...
...The Seamen's Act took the average space allotted to seamen on foreign vessels and made it applicable to seamen on American vessels...
...There was more brutality, more maiming, beating and wounding in the 8 per cent of the world's carrying trade controlled by America than in the 67Vj> per cent controlled by Great Britain...
...Is this class legislation...
Vol. 19 • January 1909 • No. 2
