I said to him—

We in the United States believe that we know what is good for us as a nation. Our organization in the United States has adopted this thing and has stayed with it, and I am not going to consent to any such thing. I am going back to the United States and report to the membership upon the proposition.

Others have received a loan of money-raised trouble, and in order to save trouble in the organization I did not make any report upon it except to the executive committee.

Now, that is all I can give you regarding that. The International Shipping Federation is opposed to this; the shipowners of Great Britain are opposed to this; that is as plain as anything could possibly be. It is from them that the British protests come.

Senator KING. Is your organization for this bill?

Mr. FURUSETH. Absolutely. I received a telegram from Seattle, where the question has been raised, stating that 75 members in a special meeting passed a resolution wanting this bill absolutely to go ahead and not to let anything detain us. That was four or five years ago.

Senator KING. Is there any bona fide seamen's organization in the United States that is opposed to it?

Mr. FURUSETH. None.

Senator KING. Has Mr. Flynn continued his position in the union by keeping up his dues, and so forth? Is he still a member?

Mr. FURUSETH. The last dues his organization paid were in 1927. It has not paid anything since. He has been permitted to keep on because we wanted them to be together as much as possible, and one man could not carry the load, so we shared it as best we could. But his appearing here in opposition to this bill is the most astonishing thing to me, although he had said he would do it. I reported to our general secretary, who is an executive officer, that he had said he was going to oppose this bill and the La Follette bill.

Senator KING. Is there any other point that you wish to bring out?

Mr. FURUSETH. By the way, after he appeared here I sent a telegram out to the effect that he had appeared in opposition to this bill. So that what the rest of the executive board may want to do with him now I do not know. He is not speaking for our organization at all under any circumstances; and there is no other organization in the United States, except the "reds," pure "reds." They are pretending to have some organization in New York and some little part in San Francisco. Their whole effort has been made, however, to get the seamen of the United States, like the seamen of other countries, to join with them because they want to use them to carry the kind of propaganda from one nation to another that they can not send by mail or express.

Senator KING. Propaganda emanating from Moscow ?
Mr. FURUSETH. Yes.

Senator KING. Is there anything else, Mr. Furuseth?
Mr. FURUSETH. Not to-night, Senator.

STATEMENT OF W. C. HUSHING, NATIONAL LEGISLATIVE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR

Mr. HUSHING. During Captain Petersen's testimony yesterday he named some powerful steamship organizations that were in opposition to this bill. On the other hand, he indicated, at least to me, that only a meager handful of seamen were proposing the measure. Now, that is not true; because the American Federation of Labor almost from its inception thas been behind this proposal. I think the best way to substantiate that statement is to read a resolution which was approved at the Atlantic City (N. J.) convention of the American Federation of Labor in 1925. That resolution read as follows:

RESOLUTION NO. 41. BY SEAMEN'S DELEGATION

Whereas the present immigration law is ineffective because mala fide seamen are permitted to remain on the vessels to be taken out of the country by such vessels on departing; and

Whereas vessels are permitted to go away with less number of men than they had on arrival; and

Whereas large numbers of men come into the United States in practically safe violation of the immigration law through this open side door: Therefore be it

Resolved, That mala fide seamen be deported as passengers on vessels other than those on which they came at expense of the vessel on which they were brought to the United States; and further

Resolved, That vessels in the coastwise trade should pay the cost of deporting such men as are not entitled to sail in such trade because they are not properly admitted to the United States; and further

Resolved, That persons who may not come as immigrants should not be permitted to as seamen, unless they come in a vessel in distress or in a vessel carrying the flag of the country of which they are subjects or citizens as distinct from countries which are colonies or dependencies of such countries.

Your committee concurs in the resolution and recommends that copies of same be sent to the Secretary of Labor, the Commissioner of Immigration, and the chairmen of the House and Senate Committees on Immigration. Furthermore, your committee recommends that the executive council be instructed to lend its earnest efforts in cooperation with the representatives of the International Seamen's International Union toward the enactment of the desired legislation. That was adopted in 1924. At every succeeding convention the federation has indorsed practically the same resolution.

Senator KING. How many conventions have you had since? Mr. HUSHING. They occur annually. At our last convention, held at Vancouver, British Columbia, October 5 to 15, inclusive, 1931, the executive council reported, in part, on the seamen's bill as follows:

The intent of this bill was to prevent the smuggling of immigrants as seamen into the United States. The practice has been for some shipowners to bring into the country from 25 to 100 extra seamen. Many of them are Chinamen. Under the seamen's act a seaman can leave ship as soon as it reaches a harbor. The surplus seamen immediately land and are absorbed in the population.

The bill provides that every vessel must take out of the country as many seamen as it brings in. The bill has passed the Senate several times but always met opposition in the House. Organizations of shipowners, with the assistance of Members of Congress, have been the influences which prevented the passage of the bill in the House.

Now I will give you the action of our last meeting on that recommendation of the council, in part. The heading is, "Seamen's bill," and the report is as follows:

Upon that portion of the report of the executive council under the above caption, page 110, the committee reported as follows:

"Under this caption the executive council sets forth the attempts made in the last Congress to prevent the smuggling of immigrants as seamen to the Unite States.

"We recommend that the executive council continue its active aid in beha of this needed legislation."

The report of the committee was unanimously adopted, and, in s far as I can recollect, in all the years since 1925, when that first reso lution was adopted, I know of no opposition in our convention by any of the seamen's delegates or others.

We have always considered this an immigration measure; and it the advantages that might accrue to the seamen under it were ever considered it was in a very negligible way. We were attempting to stop what we considered a gap through which immigrants were pour ing into the United States in an illegal way.

Now, I want to indorse the bill heartily on behalf of the federation. and we hope that we get some quick action over here in the Senate and then in the House. That is about all I have to say. I thank you. Mr. Chairman.

Captain PETERSEN. Mr. Chairman, I want to say that I am heartily in accord with our Federation of Labor in its stand to stop aliens coming into the country. We are for it now and we always have been for it. So far as the principle of the matter is concerned, we are still for it; and if there is any way by which that can be done any more effectively than it is being done now, we are heartily in sympathy with it. Now, I have one or two questions, Senator King, to

answer.

Senator KING. You will not duplicate what you said this morning!? Captain PETERSEN. No. You asked Mr. Furuseth whether or not I represented any foreign lines on the Pacific coast. I want to say that we have some 70 American steamship organizations in our two organizations on the Pacific coast, every one of them under the American flag. We do not accept members in our organization except the American-flag ships.

In relation to Mr. Mayper's statement made here about the Shipping Federation, Mr. Mayper represents the Trans-Atlantic Shipping Congress; not any federation; and the conference is an organization of ship owners, foreign and domestic, who try to meet for the purpose of adjusting rates and coming to an agreement on the matter of rates in their business, national and international. That is all that Mr. Mayper represents here.

Senator KING. Your line would participate in those conferences. Captain PETERSEN. Yes.

Senator KING. For the purpose of establishing rates?

Captain PETERSEN. Yes. While we are supposed to maintain our conference rates, our foreign rivals walk out on us many times and do not stay with us.

Senator KING. I was wondering if you did not think those conferences for the purpose of fixing rates and after the fixing of rates might not run afoul of the anti-trust laws.

Captain PETERSEN. They have been trying to have legislation over and over again. There was a bill in the Senate last year, Senator Johnson's bill, I think it was. That bill will probably come up again. It is for the purpose of trying to fix a proposition so that

these conferees under penalty of bond will be required to maintain their agreement.

Mr. Furuseth said that the shipowners were in active opposition to the Seamen's Union. Among my multitudinous duties is that of being in charge of the marine service bureaus on the Pacific coast. Their organization is set up for the purpose of supplying seamen to our ships so that they can depart on schedules; and not alone that, but so we can put on board our ships ourselves men who are eligible under the law, men who are qualified under the law so far as their occupational status is concerned and so far as their national status is concerned.

We have been cooperating so closely with the Department of Labor that we have had reports made again and again commending us for our activity in keeping ships clean from seamen who are ineligible to sail. So far as any opposition to Mr. Furuseth's union is concerned, we have been acting in entire harmony with the seamen who are members of Mr. Furuseth's union; and, incidentally, I used to be a member of it myself. We have never in any sense of the word used any effort of any kind, shape, or form to discriminate against the members of the seamen's union. We are not doing it now. Not alone are we not doing it, but we are providing relief for seamen on the Pacific coast in a way that is not done elsewhere. We have given these seamen money, loaned them money, provided them with meals and a place to sleep, and have done everything possible to meet this present crisis. We have endeavored to aid American seamen, many of them members of Mr. Furuseth's union. So I do not want it understood here that we are in any way in opposition to the seamen's union. I can not make that statement too emphatic.

Of course, a good many things that Mr. Furuseth has said here today would take too long for me to answer. I find that Mr. Furuseth is to-day living in the time of the old sailing ships when he says that every master would know the character of men on board his vessel. He is talking about the days when there were 40 or 50 men on a vessel; but when to-day there are 500 or more men on our steamships a master can not know anything about them, and you can not charge the master of a ship with knowing.

Let me say this in relation to the seamen themselves: Remember that a seaman is every man who is on the ship's articles. It might be a boy who is making his first trip. He is just as much a seaman under our law as the man who has been to sea for 25 years.

In the crew there may be boys on deck, there may be boys in the engine room, there may be men playing in the orchestra, there may be bell hops or manicurists, there may be numbers of people on board a ship just the same as in a big hotel. Every one of them is a seaman under the law.

When you talk about a sailor you are talking about one who has some technical skill. Those are things that make the operation of a bill of this kind difficult and that make difficulty for any immigration inspector to determine what is bona fide and what is mala fide.

I would like to know what his definition of a bona fide or a mala fide is, because in those two things we can determine what a seaman is. I do not like to get into any personal discussion with Mr. Furu

seth, but I would like to call attention to some of the statements he has made, particularly in relation to the detention of men on board ship. He said that most of these people who have been detained on board ship are Asiatics. That is not so, at all.

Let me tell you how detain a man on board ship under the act of 1924. An immigration inspector may go on board a ship and talk to a man. If he does not like the cut of his hair or the cut of his clothes, he can declare that man to be a mala fide seaman if he wants to. There is no appeal from his decision, except to the Secretary of Labor. We have cases over and over again where seamen coming from the Orient stop at Honolulu before they get to continental United States. An immigration inspector can go on board and see a man and give him a detention order and direct that he shall not be discharged when he arrives in continental United States. I have said, "Why is this man detained on board?" The answer is, “I don't know." I have said, " But we want to know." They said, "We do not know." I have said, "Will you cable Honolulu and find out why this man is detained?" "No; the man in Honolulu has original jurisdiction." His jurisdiction must be appealed only to the Secretary of Labor. We do not know why he is detained on board this vessel, and there is no finding out. We have been required over and over again to keep these men on board ship. We have obeyed every legal enactment of the shipping law, and they have been detained on board ship without any reason whatever.

It has been done over and over again, and these 4,000 who have been ordered detained on board are not Asiatics, because Asiatics are not permitted to go ashore at all. They are simply ordinary seamen on board the vessels who might have been questioned by the inspector and he might have learned that a man intended to stay in this country, and because of that opinion, which is not produced in writing, he gives that detention order, and if that man leaves the ship, it means a $1,000 fine.

You could not make any more rigid law, I do not care how you put it on paper, than the right of the immigration department under section 20 of the act of 1924 to detain men on board, because they can detain them on board without giving any reason whatsoever.

Mr. Furuseth says you can look at a man and tell whether he is a good seaman or a bad seaman, whether he knows his job or not. How can an immigration inspector say of a boy on his first trip out that he is an experienced seaman? He is not. Or a boy in the engine room on his first trip out is an experienced seaman? He is not. But he is just as much an experienced seaman as a man who has been a seaman for years. How can any inspector tell? The reason we are opposed to this bill is that these things show themselves in so many different ways that we feel the provisions of the bill itself can not possibly be carried out, and not because we in any sense of the word want to bring men into the United States who are aliens. God knows we have enough of them here now.

When I left San Francisco there were thousands of men ashore out of work, many of them alien seamen who are in this country legally and who can not ship out in 60 days because there is no employment for them. Those seamen can not be employed in the coastwise service; they can not wash dishes or swab out a restaurant or do any