Weaver Out

Away from a Baltimore pier of Maryland Drydock Co. last month churned the world's first all-fireproof ship--the chunky, white, 250-ft S.S. Catherine of Bull Steamship Line, having been taken from her regular Caribbean run and rebuilt from keel up with noncombustible materials, As if this were a monument to his regime, Director Joseph B. Weaver of the Bureau of Navigation and Steamboat Inspection, who was appointed by President Roosevelt to improve safety at sea after the Morro Castle fire of 1934, last week resigned his job. Said he: "I feel that the job is about done. We have cleaned up a lot of ships and pulled some out of service. We have assembled a technical staff and we have gone through 22 months without a single passenger fatality aboard American ships, and that is a good record." Good though the record may be, its establishment was not accepted by Washington observers as Director Weaver's chief reason for quitting. Strongest possibility was that Joe Weaver, onetime NRA shipping administrator, was not too happy in the Department of Commerce.* Year ago when Secretary Roper's "lethargy" was scored by the National Committee on Safety at Sea, someone began releasing confidential data about the situation. Over Director Weaver's protests, Secretary Roper fired the Bureau's second and third men--Chief Investigator Frederick L. Adams and Commander H. McCoy Jones.

Last week he also dismissed the Committee, whose Chairman Howard S. Cullman at once demanded to know why his group had been dismissed "in so abrupt a manner without so much as an explanation." All year there was talk that Director Weaver would resign, but he thrust out his square jaw, snapped that he would "not be forced out" until he had accomplished something.

Director Weaver had a hand in creating the Copeland Sea Safety Act passed last summer. Its most publicized clause has been the requirement that all seamen must carry continuous discharge books, containing photograph, records of voyages.

Screaming that these "fink books" lend themselves perfectly to blacklisting by shippers, seamen on both coasts protested against carrying them, even tied up ships by refusing to get them (TIME, Jan. 25). Month ago a Federal judge in Manhattan granted a preliminary injunction against the enforced use of discharge books. Last week he refused to renew the injunction. The disappointed seamen had small consolation in the Bland Bill, passed by the House last week as a compromise measure, giving sailors a choice of "fink books" or scarcely less revelatory "certificates of identification." Provided, however, was a fine of $1,000 or a year in jail for anyone attempting to blacklist holders of either.

*Three weeks ago, tension in another of Secretary of Commerce Roper's subordinate de partments, the Bureau of Air Commerce, forced the resignation of Director Eugene Luther Vidal (TIME, March 8), the "exile" of two associates.

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