The CHAIRMAN. Yes; they are available, based upon the last

census.

Mr. FOCHT. They are hard to find, because they are violating the law and they are escaping the law.

Mr. MEADOws. Yes, there are too many.

The CHAIRMAN. I am not guaranteeing my figures, and he is not guaranteeing his figures. This is off the record.

The International Seamen's Union of America, Mr. Patrick O'Brien

STATEMENT OF PATRICK O'BRIEN, REPRESENTING INTERNATIONAL SEAMEN'S UNION OF AMERICA, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mr. O'BRIEN. Mr. Chairman and ladies and gentlemen of the committee: I am appearing here trying to take the place of Mr. Furuseth, who is in the hospital.

The CHAIRMAN. We are sorry to hear that.

Mr. O'BRIEN. The real reason for this legislation, Mr. Chairman, is because of the fact a great number of people have arrived in this country under the guise of being seamen. We became cognizant of that fact many years ago.

The CHAIRMAN. I became definitely cognizant of that fact in the last un-American activity, when I found that the Germans have added more to their list of seamen, and they were nothing but spies. That I find.

Mr. SCHULTE. Then you agree with me?

The CHAIRMAN. I always agree with you. I am only disputing the amount.

Mr. O'BRIEN. Mr. Chairman, many years ago we arrived at that conclusion, and for a period of 11 or 12 years we have been fighting to get this legislation through this Congress.

The CHAIRMAN. That has been here more than 11 years.

Mr. O'BRIEN. 1924.

The CHAIRMAN. I was here away back in 1922 or 1923, and that was the first bill they gave me.

Mr. O'BRIEN. Well, I am not going to dispute you. However, that makes much more reason why we should pass the bill now.

The CHAIRMAN. That is all right. I am not charging that against you.

Mr. O'BRIEN. That strengthens my statement. This bill, or bills of similar character, have been kicked from the House to the Senate, and from the Senate back to the House. One time the Senate will pass the bill, and another time the House has passed the bill. But we have never been able to get both Houses to pass the bill.

Now, then, the necessity for this legislation, Mr. Chairman, is obvious, because of the charges that have been brought to your attention about the spies and others. There is not any question about the necessity for it.

I have here some letters that Mr. Furuseth has written and which he intended to use before the committee, and I, with the permission of the committee, will read. This is written to Senator King:

MY DEAR SENATOR: With regard to S. 379—

That is the bill before the Senate

I beg to remind you—

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). You do not have to refer to the bill, Mr. Witness. Just refer to the substance of your discussion, because we are considering now H. R. 5380.

Mr. O'BRIEN. I know, but I am reading a letter

The CHAIRMAN. But there are some amendments to this bill that were not in the other bill.

Mr. O'BRIEN (reading):

With regard to S. 379, I beg to remind you that this bill passed the Senate twice and was reported from the Senate committee four times. The last time after having been withdrawn because of the opposition of Senator Reed of Pennsylvania. When it passed the Senate it failed to get out of the House committee because of the opposition of the chairman and of Mr. Free, of California.

The CHAIRMAN. What chairman are you talking about now? You see, that is where -what chairman? Which was it? What year? It may be 1928 or 1929.

Mr. O'BRIEN. I am reading this letter, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, the chairman of this committee does not know of any such event at all. As a matter of fact

Mr. O'BRIEN (interposing). Well, Mr. Chairman, there is not any reason why you should not, if you want to, say that you are not the chairman referred to. I don't suppose you are.

Mr. KRAMER. I know, but don't you think you ought to be definite about that? That is an aspersion against the chairman, or some chairman. You ought to at least place the time.

Mr. O'BRIEN. I am reading a letter.

Mr. FоCHT. Who wrote the letter?

Mr. O'BRIEN. Mr. Furuseth. He wrote the letter, and I do not know how long you have been chairman of this committee, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. You ought to make it definite. You are just making a charge that because of certain people this bill was not passed.

Mr. O'BRIEN. All right; I won't read that.

The CHAIRMAN. I don't think you ought to make a statement like that unless you have some definite information as to the facts in the

matter.

Mr. O'BRIEN. All right, Mr. Chairman.

The bill passed the House under suspension in the last Congress with but 17 Members in opposition. The 17 voted against it because it did not contain the amendment taking care of fuel ports (Hampton Roads). It failed to pass the Senate in the last Congress, because one objection could do it, and that objection was furnished by Senator White, of Maine.

Hearings on this bill have gone on for 8 years. There is nothing new that can possibly be brought against it except possibly the fact that foreign shipowners, coming here with a full passenger list and leaving with a scant one, have been accustomed to call members of the stewards department in, pay them their money, tell them to go, and then put them down as deserters. That is the reason why they wanted to extend the return of the seamen they had brought for a year. The other new thing that they have not specially brought forward and which is only another red herring, is that it will taken an unconscionable time to examine the crew in quarantine. The crew must be examined in quarantine anyway under the law for loathsome and contagious diseases. To examine them for the purpose of finding out who is a bona-fide or mala-fide seamen need not take a long time because they do not need to examine anybody except new men.

I have here also a letter written to Mr. MacCormack, on unAmerican activities, which with your permission I will read or file, as the committee decides.

The CHAIRMAN. Is it very long? What is the substance of the letter?

Mr. O'BRIEN. It relates to the type of people that get in, I suppose. The CHAIRMAN. I think it can be inserted in the record. It is quite long.

Mr. FоCHT. Does it give their nationality? What are they? Mr. O'BRIEN. It does not go into nationalities, Congressman. Mr. FоCHT. Well, that is very important, is it not? Mr. O'BRIEN. It would be very difficult to find out the nationality, because if we had the nationality of the men that were deserting, we would know who they were and probably be able to stop them. But unfortunately we do not know the men. We only know that they desert or are paid off in some cases, as in the case of these stewards. (THE DOCUMENT HERE PRESENTED BY MR. O'BRIEN APPEARS IN FULL AS FOLLOWS): JANUARY 15, 1935.

Hon. JOHN W. McCORMACK,

Chairman House Committee on Un-American Activities,

House Office Building, Washington, D. C. MY DEAR MR. MCCORMACK: Since my arrival here before Christmas I have been confined to my room through illness.

Mr. Hushing, legislative representative of the American Federation of Labor, tried to obtain for me an opportunity for a short statement to your committee. He found that you were having no more hearings either in the open or in executive session, but that if I was to write a short brief it would be given consideration.

The seamen are vitally interested and my anxiety to be heard arises from the seamen's peculiar position which is thoroughly understood by the Communists, the Nazis, and the Fascists. The seamen can come into the United States without a visa-in fact, they can go to every country without a visa-and they are, therefore, the safest and most effective carriers of such information and propaganda which the Communists cannot entrust either to the mails or to the express. This is so distinctly understood and appreciated by the Communists and other "reds" or "pinks" that the Communists specifically have for years been devoting their attention to capturing the seamen for the purpose of using them as carriers. We seamen have thoroughly appreciated this fact for years and have tried to counteract their efforts and prevent them getting such control of the seamen's minds as to make them enthusiastic carriers for them. One of the glaring incidents of the use that they make of the seamen was illustrated a few years ago in a vessel leaving San Francisco for Japan. One of the men had two valises full of propaganda in Japanese script which he was to deliver at Yokohama. When he brought one of the valises ashore, a Japanese officer made him open the valise. The officer found the Japanese script-the man and the valise were taken into custody. He was given several years of imprisonment in Yokohama and died in jail during the earthquake. This illustrates what is happening on the Pacific and Atlantic.

Section 20 of the act of June 26, 1884, known as "An act to remove certain burdens on the American merchant marine and encourage the American foreign carrying trade and for other purposes", reads as follows:

SEC. 20. That every master of a vessel in the foreign trade may engage any seaman at any port out of the United States, in the manner provided by law, to serve for one or more round trips from and to the port of departure, or for a definite time, whatever the destination; and the master of a vessel clearing from a port of the United States with one or more seamen engaged in a foreign port as herein provided shall not be required to reship in a port of the United States the seamen so engaged, or to give bond, as required by section 4576 of the Revised Statutes. to produce said seamen before a boarding officer on the return of said vessel to the United States.

Shipowners are using this to sign orientals and others when it is convenient. thus assisting in smuggling them into the country. Under the law which exempts the seamen from the exclusion and practically from the immigration laws and owing to the fact that the shipowners are not anxious to train any scamen for themselves, they are shipping men in Europe whenever it is profitable to them Whether the seaman is shipped under section 20 of the act of June 26, 1884, above

quoted, or shipped under the general law, he can and does use this method to get into the United States to be lost in the population or he may come simply as a carrier of propaganda, leaving again in the same ship. In either case the road is wide open for the propagandists and the propaganda to come in, notwithstanding any laws of supervision that we have.

These men coming to the United States are mingling with the kind of men with whom they have the biggest influence, but they are specifically mingling with seamen, reminding them of the fact that the laws passed for their protection in the United States are disregarded and that the laws passed for safety are disregarded and pointing out how much better they do things where they come from.

The American shipowner generally speaking is hostile to any organization of seamen of distinctly trade unions organized on American lines and are giving all the opportunity to the propagandists to saturate the minds of the American seamen with the belief that they have no chance under the American system and that their only hope is in joining with the Reds. Shipowners on the Pacific have been using the Communists and others more or less similar to them for the purpose of destroying the Seamen's Union. In the 1934 strike on the Facific it was shown beyond any cuestion that some of the agents of the Industrial Association (an employers organization) were cooperating with and making use of the Ccmmunists for the purpose of extending the strike so as to bring about marshal law. When it was found that they could not succeed because the courts were functioning, the general strike was called off. We seamen in 1921, understanding fully the aims and purposes of the Communists made provision to keep them absolutely out of our organization and for the prompt taking away of the certificate of membership from those who had obtained it fraudently. As a result we prevented the Communists from taking charge of the organization. For these reasons the vast majority of the seamen registered with the Interratior al Seamen's Unicr of America in the 1934 strike on the Pacific proving that they had rot been suffciently influenced by the Communists to give surrender to the Communists the right to control and use them. When a strike was called for Cctober 8, 1934, cn the Atlantic and then called off because of regotiations having been opened between the shipowners and the seamen, the Communists undertook to bring about a strike of their own in which they failed because the seamen's minds had not been sufficiently saturated to obtain that purpose.

Within the past week I was visited in my room by four members of the Ccmmunists' organization with the proposal that they should be admitted to our urion so that they could be sailing where the shipowners had agreed to give preferer ce to union men. I promptly said "No; we organized seamen have never had any use for you and for the time being the shipowners don't seem to have any use for you. We certainly could not think of admitting you and what is more we are going to do whatever we can to prevent you from acting as propagandists or carriers of propaganda among the seamen.

Such publicity of the committee's activities as has been published indicates that legislation will be enacted and unless such legislation as the King-Dies bill can be enacted all other laws will be ineffective for the purpose of keeping out either the propagandists or propaganda from this country.

Respectfully yours,

(S) ANDREW FURUSETH, President International Seamen's Union of America. The CHAIRMAN. Have you a record of the desertions in the last year or two?

Mr. O'BRIEN. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. I think the committee would be very much interested in that, and it would be constructive knowledge for the conmittee.

Mr. O'BRIEN. Mr. Chairman, according to a telephone conversation that I had with the Department of Labor, they told me that the desertions were 972 for last year, and that was an increase over the year before. It was 660 something, I think, the year before.

Mr. SCHULTE. Those are desertions that they know about?
Mr. O'BRIEN. Yes.

Mr. SCHULTE. That is right.

Mr. O'BRIEN. That was their statement. What the real amount is is very difficult to find out, because the captain is not going to report it.

The CHAIRMAN. No; I don't suppose they do. Can you give us the highlights of this bill? Have you studied this bill?

Mr. O'BRIEN. Yes; I have studied the bill.

The CHAIRMAN. Section 1?

Mr. O'BRIEN. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. What is the purpose of section 1? See if I am correct: Section 1 provides that the alien members of the crew of every vessel, either flying a foreign flag or a United States flag, would be examined in quarantine

Mr. O'BRIEN. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Before the ship arrives, and to determine whether or not the alien crew members are bona-fide seamen or alien seamen who are ineligible to citizenship coming as immigrants or are afflicted with a disease which would bar their admission that is practically the substance of section 1?

Mr. O'BRIEN. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. And the practical operation of the procedure would be that if you found, say, 10 or 15 in a crew that were not seamen as you thought they were, you would take them off and take them for detention and reship them on other vessels. Is that correct? Mr. O'BRIEN. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. How would you do that? Who would be the judge on that examination, and who would determine whether they were bona fide seamen or mala fide seamen? Is there anything in the bill that provides for that?

Mr. O'BRIEN. I don't think so.

The CHAIRMAN. All right. Now, then, we proceed: Following up that section 1, alien members of the crew found not to be bona fide seamen are to be taken off the boat, sent to an immigration station, and under that provision, if found to be without valid immigration visas, are to be ordered deported on different ships than those on which they arrive, at the expense of the ship which brought them. In other words, all able-bodied seamen do not have visas; have they? Mr. O'BRIEN. Able-bodied seamen have; yes.

The CHAIRMAN. They have a certificate of seamanship.
Mr. O'BRIEN. They have visas, too.

The CHAIRMAN. They have visas, too?

Mr. O'BRIEN. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. In other words, then, the seamen that you find on that boat who have no valid visas who are not able-bodied seamen you would take off the boat?

Mr. O'BRIEN. Well, it is not only that. It is because of the fact that they may have the visas and they may not, and may have a certificate, and they may have a discharge book and all of the things that go to make up the things required by a seaman, but they would not be seamen.

The CHAIRMAN. But you do not mean to say to this committee that the seaman must have the visa. That is, a visa as a seaman not as an immigrant?

Mr. O'BRIEN. As a seaman; yes.