Crew Troubles

"That's a good crew," said salty, bushy-browed Captain Gregory Cullen in Jersey City last week. "I'd sail again with that crew. They're all right, take 'em some place where they won't be terrorized by the Reds in America. The only men we're dropping here in New York are some waiters, and that's just for incompetence. They pour soup down your back."

Captain Gregory's Dollar Liner President Garfield had just docked on its regular round-the-world schedule. Passengers had complained of insolence and insubordination among the crew. One gentleman from East Orange roared: "Rottenest bunch of Red agitators I've ever seen!" Another said he was roundly berated by a steward whom he addressed as "boy." Dollar Line officials declared they were making a sincere effort to maintain the best possible service under the circumstances.

Clad in a blue topcoat and a black Homburg hat and carrying a horn-rimmed monocle and a gleaming Malacca stick, Captain Cullen sniffed and snorted: "This talk about insolent stewards is just a lot of g-- --d hooey and lies. Why, there was not a steward logged [fined] except a couple for getting drunk. And I'd log 'em if there were any reason."

Whatever their relations with the passengers, it appeared that the President Garfield's crew had indeed had trouble among themselves. One seaman named Pulanski, furious when one of the men discovered a piece of string in his ice cream, had threatened to have it out with the mess steward. Ashore at Naples, three men had been beaten up by their fellows. Captain Gregory clapped two of the assailants in the brig. At Genoa the ship was delayed when part of the crew staged a protest meeting on the dock. After intervention by the U. S. Consul, the prisoners were released, to be sent to California as first-class passengers in another ship. A seaman who gave information to the President Garfield's officers was put ashore at Marseille for fear he would be murdered.

The President Gar field's master thought that an "unseen force" was at work. Other ships of U. S. registry were also having crew troubles. Reports of a "wave of insubordination" aboard U. S. merchantmen were getting worried attention in Washington.

Chief Joseph B. Weaver of the Commerce Department's Bureau of Navigation and Steamboat Inspection revealed that he had assembled some 500 cases of crew trouble, mostly at sea. The charges included refusals to attend fire drills, to keep sufficient steam up after reprimands for not standing watch. It appeared that a crew had refused to sail until a prisoner in jail ashore was released. One story was that fire-hose had been found mangled by axes after the ship left port. When these tales reached the Press, ship owners bitterly assailed what they considered premature publicity, declared a "sabotage scare" was being built out of nothing. They had asked for no help in straightening things out, had given Chief Weaver information, at his request, which they thought he would keep private.

Caught at the centre of all this to-do over discipline at sea was Secretary of Commerce Daniel Roper. When he got a look at the Weaver dossier he thought some items to be of sufficient gravity to lay before President Roosevelt and the Cabinet.

More headlines were made when Howard S. Cullman, a Roper appointee to the National Committee on Safety at Sea, got his personal pressagent to distribute a tart public letter by him on the human equation in safety at sea. Excerpt : "The general unrest in the maritime labor field is a matter of common knowledge. Conditions under which so-called able seamen and lifeboat men certificates are issued are known to make possible, if not encourage, flagrant fraud. How can we . . . hope that underpaid, overworked officers will be able to maintain real discipline?"

As to what was behind these labor disorders, opinions ranged from the Communist Daily Worker's charge that it was a monstrous conspiracy of Federal officials and shipowners to crush maritime labor, to the Hearstpaper belief that a great Communist plot was on foot to destroy the U. S. merchant marine. The Roosevelt Cabinet found itself seriously divided in dealing with breaches of marine discipline. When striking seamen tied up the Panama Pacific Line's S. S. California for four days in San Pedro last month (TIME, March 16), Secretary of Commerce Roper talked boldly about having the ringleaders prosecuted for mutiny. That there were no prosecutions was generally attributed to the White House influence of Madam Secretary of Labor Perkins to whom the right to strike, on land or sea, is said to have a strong sentimental appeal.

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