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Frederick J. Lang

Maritime: A Historical Sketch
and a Workers’ Program

(March 1943)

Written: 1943.
First Published: March 1943.
Second Edition: October 1945.
Source: Published for the Socialist Workers Party by Pioneer Publishers.
Transcription/HTML Markup: Sean Robertson for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Copyleft: Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (marxists.org) 2015.
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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION

I – IMPERIALISM AND THE MARITIME INDUSTRY

II – THE GOVERNMENT AND THE SHIPOWNERS

1. Up through the 1915 Seamen’s Act
2. 1915–1920: Paternalism (Real)
3. 1920–1935: Shipowners’ Gravy-Boat
4. 1935 to Pearl Harbor: Government Rationalization
5. Pearl Harbor to Date: Regimented Integration

III – THE GOVERNMENT AND MARITIME LABOR

1. Up to the 1915 Seamen’s Act
2. 1915–1921: Paternalism (Fake)
3. 1921–1934: Union Defeat And Open Shop
4. 1934–1937: Union Counter-Attack
5. 1937 to Pearl Harbor: Government Intimidation
6. Pearl Harbor to Date: Government Regimentation

IV – THE DEVELOPMENT OF LEADERSHIP

The Trend of Maritime Leadership
The Socialists: First Steps
Andrew Furuseth: Personal Leadership
The IWW: Revolutionary Trade Unionism
The Stalinists: Kremlin Weathervanes
The “Anti-Politicals”: Blind-Alley Militancy

V – THE IMPASSE – AND THE WAY OUT

To these members of the Socialist Workers Party, who lost their lives at sea in the Second World War when the ships they sailed were torpedoed by Axis submarines, this book is dedicated.

These friends and comrades were more than skilled seamen and more than loyal union militants. They were class-conscious revolutionaries who devoted their energies to the great cause of freeing humanity from the depressions, wars, and fascism of the capitalist system. This, they believed, could be accomplished only through construction of a worldwide socialist society of peace and prosperity. In furthering this program, their first interest was to arouse seamen to the necessity of strengthening the union defence against the Shipowners and their agents by adopting a militant general policy based on a Marxist analysis of the maritime industry.

It is hoped that this book will help to carry on the work for which they gave their lives.

AUTHOR’S NOTE TO THE FIRST EDITION

This book was written with the cooperation and help of Terence Phelan. Without his aid in organising material and editing the work it could not have appeared in its present form.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION

This book is addressed to all seamen who want to fight for jobs and a living wage. Since the publication of Maritime in the spring of 1943, new facts have come to light which further prove: 1) that the maritime industry of this country is actually owned and controlled by the U.S. government; 2) that the so-called shipowners are a parasitical vestige of the long-gone era of “free enterprise”; 3) that seamen are caught in the mesh of government regimentation and they can free themselves only by fighting to eliminate the ship-“owner” parasites and to establish workers’ control over the maritime industry.

In December 1944 Admiral Emery S. Land, chairman of the U.S. Maritime Commission, in response to questions by the House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, made the following statement:

“Based upon the existing construction program and appropriations therefore, and including contemplated construction to be provided for in the 1946 budget, the total cost to the government for ships and shipyards as estimated will be $15 billion, of which approximately 600,000,000 is for facilities”.

The Maritime Commission subsequently announced on August 13 of this year that the shipbuilding expenditures alone amounted to $16 billion, as of June 30, 1945. Thus another billion must be added to Admiral Land’s estimate for the single item of shipbuilding. The fact is that the total government outlay for merchant shipbuilding and shipping operations approaches $25 billion for the four war years.

What is this expenditure of $25 billion if not proof that the maritime industry is a government enterprise? This vast sum is nearly double the entire national debt of the country in 1918. It is enough to build and operate a merchant fleet of ten thousand ships. But all this money did not go for ships. Billions went directly into the pockets of graft-seeking ship-“owners”.

At present there are 5,500 merchant ships of 2,000 gross tonnes or over under control of the Maritime Commission. Some of the ships are still “owned” by private companies, but there is not a single ship that the government has not paid for twice over in the course of operation.

The Maritime Commission today holds title to almost 85 percent of merchant ships. Admiral Land estimates that the government owns approximately 4,640 ships. These consist of 2,545 Liberty’s, 613 C-type ships, 515 Victory’s, 504 high-speed tankers, 231 coastal freighters, 62 Liberty-type tankers, 62 coastal tankers and 27 reefers.

This fleet is the greatest in the world history of the maritime industry. U.S. government-owned ships now comprise approximately 50 percent of the world’s shipping. The ships have been built at the expense of the American taxpayer and belong to the American people. This is the positive side of a $25 billion expenditure.

There is another side to the government’s shipping program. The ships were built with the “aid” of private shipyards and operated with the “know-how” of private shipping companies. To them, the practice of operating government-built ships at government expense has paid big dividends. According to official figures, operating subsidies given to the parasitical ship-“owners” by the government from July 1, 1937 to June 30, 1944 alone amounted to $51,129,437.93. Fifty-odd million dollars in taxpayers’ money is a sweet pay-off.

But this is only a small part of what they got. Fortune magazine, November 1944, boasts that “the assets of many (shipping) companies have doubled and tripled; some have been multiplied five and 10 times since the war began. These funds, in large part, will be available for the purchase of new ships. Subsidized companies, as required by law, have deposited a portion of their earnings in tax- exempt reserves, which were reported in the middle of 1944 at $112 million. The industry’s cash position is stronger than ever in its history. It has in hand today sufficient funds to make down payments on enough new ships to reproduce its pre-war domestic fleet and to double its pre-war fleet in foreign trade”.

Moreover, the War Shipping Administration laid out $3 billion for voyage expenses during the war. This figure is exclusive of purchase of vessels, charter hire, major repairs, insurance, vessel management, and other items. It allowed for plenty of leeway in “sales” of ships’ equipment, supplies and provisions to the WSA.

After building the largest merchant fleet in the world (and in the process, swelling the assets of private shipping companies), the Maritime Commission is now primarily concerned with “disposal” of ships. How to get rid of this fleet?

Admiral Land proposes to offer the ships for sale at the estimated post-war reproduction cost in a representative foreign yard. American ship-“owners”, of course, get preference in purchase. Thus, such a “sale” of ships to this gang of war- time grafters turns out to be simply another steal. These ships will be “bought” with money which is part of the $25 billion poured by the government into the industry, and all of which came originally from the public treasury.

Land’s plan, not yet worked out in full detail, confronts at least three major stumbling blocks. First, there is no market for so many ships. Secondly, many of them are not suitable for post-war trade. (This applies especially to the Liberty’s which, as we said in 1942, were “built to be sunk”). And, finally, our American ship-“owners” think the price too high.

Some of the best ships will be turned over to private companies if present plans of the Maritime Commission go through. But estimates of the active post-war U.S. merchant fleet place its size at not more than 1,300 ships. This means reducing the existing fleet to one-quarter of its present size, or a reduction of 75 percent. Three out of every four ships now under government control must be disposed of in some other way than by “sale” to American ship-“owners.”

The Maritime Commission has taken this problem into consideration, too. It hopes to keep about one thousand ships in a “laid-up” fleet, in anticipation of World War III. But even if 1,300 ships are turned over to private shipping companies and another thousand put aside in a laid-up fleet, there still remain 3,000 ships to be disposed of in some other manner.

Foreign operators are not inclined to buy Liberty’s and other left-over-type ships after American operators have taken their pick. The only thing to do with the surplus ships, so far as the plans of the Maritime Commission go, is to scrap them. Consequently, a new department called “ship-breaking” has been added to the maritime industry. Admiral Land claims that in this way ships can be systematically dismantled and all parts sold to bring the highest return to the government and the taxpayer.

This project of junking ships, of course, will be turned over to “private enterprise.” How much return the government and the taxpayer will get can be measured by the early bids on ships. The highest bid made for a ship in a 10 thousand-ton class that cost $2 million to build was – $22,500. Later bids dropped as low as $9,000. This represents a “return” to the taxpayer of less than one-half cent on every dollar the Maritime Commission has sunk into the ships.

At the same time that the Maritime Commission is rounding out its plans to junk ships and turn what remains of its $25 billion investment over to the ship-“owners”, it is busy directing a campaign of union-wrecking against the seamen.

Last June, government agencies and the ship operators opened a pincer movement against pay rates for seamen. This marked the beginning of a large-scale offensive. At that time, the Maritime War Emergency Board announced drastic cuts in the war-bonus paid for Atlantic Ocean runs. The cut, effective July 15, amounted to a 40 percent reduction in seamen’s pay.

No sooner was this pay cut announced, than the Atlantic coast operators flatly rejected wage adjustments demanded by the National Maritime Union (CIO). The operators said they could not “afford” to pay a 55-cent hourly minimum wage to seamen, pleading that “such high wages would destroy the American merchant marine.”

The question of wages is only part of a much bigger problem facing seamen today. An important part of the same problem is unemployment.

Three-fourths of American-flag ships now operating will go out of service. This means four thousand ships that will not need American seamen to sail them. How many jobs is that?

It is estimated that there are 200,000 trained merchant seamen today. If three-quarters of the ships are taken out of commission, it follows that three out of every four seamen will be thrown on the beach. One hundred and fifty thousand trained seamen will be looking for jobs.

Mass unemployment weakens the union. This is clearly understood by the ship-“owners” and the anti-union government agencies. That is why they have already launched an attack on wages which will culminate in an all-out anti-union offensive in the “reconversion” period.

Seamen can meet and defeat this government-operator offensive. The indispensable condition for this is that seamen understand the problems they face. That is the purpose of this book: to explain these problems and find answers to them. The closing chapter of Maritime contains a program of action. This program is more immediately applicable today than when it was written three years ago. It says that the fight for wages and better conditions must be fought under the following slogans:

FOR UNION INDEPENDENCE!
   Defend the hiring hall!

FOR WORKERS’ CONTROL!
   Stop the mismanagement of the ship-“owner” parasites!

FOR INDEPENDENT POLITICAL ACTION!
   Build a Labor Party and put working-class representatives in Congress!

The demand for workers’ control is especially pertinent now in the so-called reconversion period. Seamen have nothing to gain and everything to lose by allowing the merchant fleet to be turned over to the corrupt ship-“owners”. This can be stopped if the unions present a really realistic programme for government ownership and workers’ control of the maritime industry.

Here is an industry that is already government-owned. The tax payers of this country have a recent $25 billion investment in it. To turn what remains of this capital investment over to a gang of parasites whose whole history has been one of graft and mismanagement is a criminal swindle of the American people.

The war has proved the utter incompetence of the shipping companies. Big Business is aware of the racket that this section of its fraternity has operated during these many years. When faced with the crisis of war the whole ownership and management and control of shipping was taken out of the hands of the ship-“owners” and placed under the centralized authority of the Maritime Commission. The entire merchant fleet was requisitioned by the government in 1942. The ship-“owners” continued to get their cut. But they were not entrusted with control of the industry.

The war-time experience has proved that the merchant fleet is best managed, despite all the waste that occurred, when management is centralized. It would have been impossible for the private shipping companies to build and operate the five thousand-odd ships necessary to meet war-time needs. The “know-how” of the shipping magnates was a hindrance, not a help, in that job. All they really know how to do is reach for the swag.

Today the interests of Big Business are no longer threatened by imperialist rivals. The merchant fleet can now be turned back to private management. This means that seamen’s wages and living conditions will be determined by what the ship-“owners” can “afford,” after they have converted government operating subsidies into their own pockets.

The post-war merchant fleet, however reduced, cannot be operated without heavy government subsidies. The Maritime Commission will continue to pour millions into the maritime industry.

These government subsidies could easily cover the expenses necessary to pay seamen a base wage of $200 a month. This is the necessary minimum wage and it should never be allowed to fall below what it costs a man to live and maintain his family are sure.

Just as living wages could be paid, so the hours of work aboard ship could be shortened, if the super-profits of the ship-“owners” were cut out. There is no reason why seamen should work a 56-hour week. Organized labour long ago won the 40-hour week, some unions have won a 30-hour week. It is time that the work week for seamen be reduced accordingly.

Cutting down the hours of work on-board ship means introducing the four-watch system. This, together with higher wages, is the only way to solve the problem of unemployment.

These demands for living wages, shorter hours and more jobs can be one. Under government ownership of the maritime industry the unions can present their demands directly to the real boss. It would no longer be necessary to go through the hypocritical pretence of asking the ship-“owner” if he can “afford” to pay living wages only to have the case referred to an “impartial” government agency.

It is safe to say that the operating subsidies necessary to keep a sizeable merchant fleet in operation and provide living wages and decent conditions for the men who sailed ships would be far less than the sums demanded under the mismanagement of the ship-“owners”. Thus, by fighting for government ownership seamen will not only win better conditions for themselves, but will also effect great savings for the taxpayers.

To ensure against continuation of ship-“owner” graft in high government circles, it will be necessary for the organized seamen to exercise control over the maritime industry. Union control of all hiring must be maintained. In addition to this, the unions should have access to the financial accounts of the Maritime Commission, and a quarterly finance report should be made to the membership, just as is the case with the union’s own financial records. In this way, operating subsidies can be fixed to meet the needs of the seamen.

This is what we mean by government ownership and workers’ control of the maritime industry. It is a demand based upon a comprehensive program to meet the needs of merchant seamen.

Only such a program can halt the offensive of the Maritime Commission and the ship-“owners” – an offensive that aims to wipe out the independent existence of the maritime unions.

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