"Fink Books"

There are some 130,000 seamen in the U. S. merchant marine. Until this year these men have had to pass no examinations in seamanship to get jobs. They merely submitted discharge papers from previous voyages. These papers were terse in the extreme, had no positive identification, were often sold by poverty-stricken sailors. In New York's Bowery or Boston's Scollay Square any landlubber could buy papers saying he was an accomplished Able Seaman. Many authorities blamed this situation in part for the Morro Castle disaster. Last June, Congress passed the Copeland Sea Safety Bill, which went into effect Dec. 26. The bill specifies such limitations as an eight-hour, three-watch day, that 65%, of the deck force have A. B. certificates, that 75% be U. S. citizens. With many of the new rules both shipowners and seamen are pleased. With one clause, however, U. S. sailors are vehemently dissatisfied. This is the clause that substitutes a continuous discharge book for the old haphazard papers. The Department of Commerce started issuing discharge books Dec. 26. This week they become requisites. to get jobs at sea. This week too, striking seamen marshaled their forces for a final drive against them.

The continuous discharge book looks like a passport, has a serial number. Each seaman must get one from the Department of Commerce, which keeps a duplicate. In the book is space for the seaman's photograph, signature and fingerprints. There are spaces for official records of 84 voyages. Duplicate information must be sent to Washington. Seamen call them "fink books," claim that they lend themselves perfectly to blacklisting by the shipowners. If a seaman is an agitator or striker, all the line has to do is record the number of his book, then refuse ever to hire him again.

Last week, seamen were picketing the Department of Commerce in Washington, but some 8,000 seamen had accepted the books. Seaman Joseph Curran, leader of the East Coast shipping strike, organized a march of 1,500 strikers from Atlantic ports to reinforce the Washington picketers. Derisive shipowners asserted that the parade of cheering, dungareed men who rode into the Nation's Capital in battered trucks was the last flicker of the East Coast strike. Never authorized by Union heads, as is the Pacific Coast strike, the Atlantic fight has been nowhere near as clear-cut. On the Pacific last week after Si days there were still 235 ships tied up and only foreign bottoms cleared port. On the Atlantic, however, many a U. S. liner and freighter steamed away and two powerful unions (Masters, Mates and Pilots of America; National Marine Engineers Beneficial Association), which had joined Seaman Curran's insurgents, reefed their sails, returned to work.

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