Word: seamans
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...three months, an insurgent strike led by Seaman Joseph Curran tried ineffectually to tie up Atlantic and Gulf ports. Last week the strikers, weary of futile picketing and fighting, voted on peace. Only in four of 14 ports was a majority for carrying on. Chief gain that Seaman Curran could claim in surrender was that "East Coast shipowners have been kept so busy they have not tried to break up the West Coast strike...
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...
...Martin Johnson had risked many of the world's perils. A runaway at 14, he went to Europe on a cattle boat, returned as a stowaway, then shipped as a seaman on Jack London's Snark. Returning to the U. S., he married 16-year-old Osa Leighty, set off with her on 25 years of exploring, much of it in their own planes. Last week they were back from Borneo jungles for one of their periodic lecture tours. At Salt Lake City he remarked to newshawks: "America, probably because it is the most civilized place...
...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...
...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...