New Deal

Outstanding among civilian heroes of this war are merchant seamen who, often without proper escort protection (see above), deliver munitions to the fighting fronts. Last week, while thousands of these men performed their duties on the seven seas, some important developments affecting their status exploded at home.

Maritime Mutiny? From Guadalcanal came an ugly story: the crew of one merchant ship had mutinied by refusing to discharge cargo on Saturday afternoon and Sunday. Quick to deny this charge was Joseph Edwin Curran, boss of the National Maritime Union, which up till recently controlled with an iron hand almost all sailors operating out of East Coast ports and some operating out of West Coast ports as well. Said Curran: "The report is a smear campaign."

True or false (and at week's end the truth was unclear), even the report of the strike came to Curran as a bitter blow. For it severely prejudiced two pleas which he had just made to top officials in Washington. One plea was that the Navy remove its gun crews from merchant ships and put common sailors in charge of the guns.

New Training Program. The second and more important Curran plea was that the U.S. Merchant Service decrease its merchant sailor training program which plans to graduate some 50,000 new merchant sailors this year. According to Curran only about 20,000 new seamen are needed. But with three to five Liberty ships coming off the ways every day, the Government is taking no chances. Besides schools in Florida and California, it has poured $14,000,000 into a new trainee school on Long Island's Sheepshead Bay which is geared to turn out some 10,000 graduates every 90 days.

Head of this experiment is tough, able Captain George Wauchope (rhymes with chalk-up). He was called to active service in the Navy after seven years as director of the American South African Line, and nearly 20 years of sea duty during which he once skippered a ship on which Joe Curran was serving as a common seaman. Under Wauchope's direction, trainees at Sheepshead get basic lifeboat-handling drill, elementary courses in deck seamanship, and engineering courses in which they stand regular watch at equipment duplicating conditions aboard Liberty ships.

The N.M.U. sees in this program a direct threat to its power. Most recruits are pink-cheeked, corn-fed youngsters from the Midwest who have never seen deep water, or been exposed to unionism. They are far different from the old-line shellback malcontents who were duck soup for Curran's earlier pinko type of organizing, and they are not obliged to hold union cards. Only 1,000 to 1,500 monthly swing over to N.M.U. This percentage is not big enough if Curran is to hold his grip.

New Deal for Seamen. The Government training program thus bids fair to revolutionize the whole status of U.S. merchant seamen. And a new deal is long overdue. In the past shipowners have been something less than forehanded in providing crews with decent living conditions. But, more recently, the absolute power of N.M.U. along the East Coast has also given plenty of worry to Washington officials. Well known is the charge that N.M.U. leadership is strongly Communist influenced. Before Russia went to war against Germany Curran and his associates were violently isolationist; the moment that Russia declared war, they immediately reversed their position. Washington has at long last realized the danger of allowing supreme power over U.S. seamen to rest in the hands of men who have toed the line of Russian foreign policy.

Best hope for the future of the Merchant Marine is that the new blood which the Government training program is injecting into it will one day reorganize the leadership of N.M.U. and that the unions, shipowners and Government can work out a sensible tripartite division of responsibility (such as attained in England under the Board of Trade). In that event the U.S. Merchant Service--now doing a heroic job in time of war--may once again be the pride of the nation in time of peace.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.