22 February 1877 • Hartford, Conn. (New York World, 25 February 1877,
and MS, CtY-BR, UCCL 01408)
Sir: If you should glance over the letters which have come to me from New York &Ⓐemendation Brooklyn since last Sunday you would be surprised to perceive how general is the knowledge of Mr. Chas. C. Duncan’s character in those cities, & how frank & outspokenⒶemendation the abhorrence of it.1explanatory note It seems that everybody has known, for four or five years that this Shipping Commissioner was diligently & constantly robbing the till of his office, with the exception of the brief intervals of time which he devoted to the Sunday-school of which he was (& is) Superintendent.2explanatory note And yet he has been allowed to keep his place. This ought to delight those sarcastic people who say we do not live under a “form of government” in America, but under a “system of organized imbecility.”
I think that Mr. Duncan’s strength has lain in the fact that he robs nobody but sailors & the United States Government. Nobody is personally interested in the protection of these, else the newspapers would have been flooded with the complaints of sufferers, & Mr. Duncan would have been driven from his office long ago.
Penning newspaper letters about this over-pious miscreant is not agreeable work, & I would much prefer to leave the present one unwritten; but one correspondent desires to know something about the law which made Mr. Duncan a Shipping Commissioner, & I am sure that there are others who would like to see a synopsis of its provisions. That law was devised by Mr. Duncan himself. It is plainly & simply a Black Flag, & the man who has sailed under it all these years is—but name him yourself.
That infamous law was most ably dissected & its purpose exposed four or five years ago, in a pamphlet published by Messrs. Morris &Ⓐemendation Wilder, attorneys, of New York.3explanatory note That pamphlet will destroy Mr. Duncan & his law if the judiciary committees of Congress can be brought to read it.
The title of Mr. Duncan’s law is a blistering sarcasm: “An Act for the Further Protection of Seamen.”4explanatory note Further along the reader will see what “protection” means in a Shipping Commissioner’s dictionary.
1. Under all previous laws the injured sailor could bring his case in a court of equity. His only resource now is to a court of law: “his only remedy lies in the inflexible terms of a statute of which the court is compelled to be a strict & rigid interpreter.” No more equity is permitted, no more “exercise of discretion in view of all circumstances of a case.”
2. Under the old laws a sailor’s rights were clearly defined, & his remedy was simple & inexpensive. Under the new, the process is cumbered by all sorts of complications & obstructions, & the expenses increased to a prohibitory degree. “The maze of technicalities to which the seaman is now compelled to conform could not have been more cunningly devised by an organized band of conspirators intent upon perplexing & robbing him!”
3. This new law gives the sailor not a single right or privilege which he did not possess before; but it takes from him certain rights & privileges of inestimable value which he did possess before.
4. The new law creates a disease called a Shipping Commissioner, who is to “superintend” the shipping & discharge of sailors, & charge a fee for each man shipped or discharged. All these fees come eventually out of the sailor’s pocket—& they have always gone into Mr. Duncan’s.
5. The Shipping Commissioner “may refuse to proceed with any engagement or discharge unless the fees thereon are first paid.” That is a quotation from the law! Jack may finish his voyage, but if he is unable to pay his fee he can remain the property of the ship-owner, for Mr. Duncan will not release him! This is “protection”—to the Shipping Commissioner.
6. The law gives the Shipping Commissioner $5,000 a year for “superintending;” but he has charged the country more than $160,000 in four years for that needless service, by pocketing the fees.
7. “All acts done by a clerk or deputy shall be as valid & binding as if done by the Shipping Commissioner himself.” Was ever a law more ingeniously devised for the coddling of a lazy pilferer? He was not even willing to take the trouble to do the pilfering himself.
8. A penalty is provided for the punishment ofⒶemendation any one who shall solicit a seaman’s custom for a sailor boarding-house. That looks well, on its face, but—
9. “Every payment of wages to a seaman shall be valid in law, notwithstanding any previous sale or assignment of such wages; & no assignment or sale of such wages shall bind the party making the same.” This is not a quotation from the rules & by-laws ofⒶemendation a band of highwaymen, but is the exact wording ofⒶemendation this most disgraceful statute. Its plain meaning is that the Government denies to the sailor the common human right to do as he pleases with his own! The effect is this: Formerly those dreadful boarding-house landlords fed & lodged the sailor on credit when his money was all gone, taking an assignment of his first advance money (when he should next get a berth) as their security. The new law forbids the sailor to give such security now by making such security valueless: so the boarding-houses promptly turn him adrift when his money is gone, &—the Shipping Commissioner takes care of him! Suppose you apply at the Sunday school in Brooklyn & ask Mr. Duncan that sarcastic question. No—Jack becomes a tramp. This law has filled the country with tramps. It ought to have been entitled “An act for the creation of a pirate & for the multiplication of tramps.”
Everybody has heard of that horrible process of kidnapping sailors, called “shanghaeing;” everybody has loathed it, everybody has cursed it. Could anybody but a Duncan dream of so foul a crime as the creation of a law to legalize shanghaeing? Could anybody but a Duncan be heartless enough, cruel enough, shameless enough? I ask you to read this extract from the law framed by this bowelless Commissioner, & see if you can realize the fact that such a statute as this has blackened the code of America for five years (& almost unchallenged):
10. Whenever any seaman neglects or refuses to join, or deserts from or refuses to proceed to sea in any ship in which he is duly engaged to serve, or is found otherwise absenting himself therefrom without leave, the master, or any mate, or the owner, or consignee may in any place in the United States, with or without the assistance of the local public officers or constables (who are hereby directed to give their assistance, if required), apprehend him without first procuring a warrant, and may thereupon in any case, and shall, in case he so requires, and it is practicable, convey him before any court of justice, & c.Ⓐemendation, and may, for the purpose of conveying him before such court of justice, detain him in custody for a period not exceeding twenty four hours, or may, if he does not so require, or if there is no such court at or near the place, at once convey him on board.
Let us suppose a case. A shanghaer has engaged to procure a crew for an outgoing vessel. He comes, with his little gang of assistants, to an isolated place & seizes a man he never saw before—Mr. Longfellow, for instance. An officer of the law interferes.
Kidnapper—I have been formally constituted mate of the Osprey, & this man is one of my crew—a deserter. I propose to take him on board. Here is the law—read it yourself.
Officer—He says he never shipped. You must convey him before a court of justice—he requires you to do it.
Kidnapper—I answer, according to the law, that “it is not practicable.” There is no such court “near this place.”
Officer—You have no warrant for his seizure.
Kidnapper—I require none—see the law.
Officer—You are right. Take him along.
Let me give an extract from the pamphlet I have before referred to:
Once on board, the mariner is secure. If the voyage be to the East Indies then the shanghaed sailor is left to shirk for himself at Bombay or Calcutta, lest if he returned home in the vessel he might seek to have the mate who kidnapped him punished. It is claimed that the shanghaeing is prevented by section 53, which provides that if a sailor be carried to sea without entering into an agreement as prescribed by the act, that the ship shall be held liable, and for each offense shall incur a penalty not exceeding $200!!!
Without questioning here the soundness of so novel a doctrine as that a vessel is liable for the torts or crimes of a mate hired perhaps of a charterer, where is the protection against shanghaeing? Section 53 does not prohibit kidnapping, but says, in effect: “Kidnapping is permissible, provided you pay from $100 to $200 apiece for the kidnapped.” And this money does not go to the sailor, but to the Government.
At this rate, kidnapping is the cheapest way to get a crew for a long voyage, especially as the chances are that the vessel will not have to pay anything at all if the kidnapped sailors are forced to desert in a foreign port. The incentive to the master to force his crew to desert is not only to save the vessel from the penalty, but to hire cheaper crews abroad.
One further fact deserves to be considered in this connection. What becomes of the wages accrued and due to a crew at the time of their desertion? The answer is that, according to all maritime law, these, of course, are forfeited. Thus the horrible truth creeps over the mind that in the desertion of the seaman lies an actual source of revenue to the master’s private pocket; then the still more horrible suspicion that the seaman’s desertion has been, possibly, reckoned upon, calculated, forced upon him—that human ingenuity has been at work devising new methods of cruelty for the express purpose of driving this man, or this crew, to desertion. Should the port be favorable to the securing of cheap substitutes, the law offers every facility for “securing them on board.” If not, then under section 53 it offers equal facilities for “securing” the runaways. But the wages of the latter are in either case forfeited. What a premium is thus placed upon cruelty! What deliberate perils are laid against the mariner’s life! With what dignity does law now invest the brutal violence of his despot!
Please read a paragraph from the summing up of the same pamphlet:
The whole truth is that in not one line of this act can the intelligent reader find for the seaman “protection.” Sixty sections are devoted to creating unnecessary officers, fixing their salaries, fees and perquisites, crushing all who might come in competition with their gains, and then binding the mariner, hand and foot, through their instrumentality, to the very class against whom he most needs protection. Of the eight remaining sections of the act, one alone, the sixty-first, bestows upon him, as we have seen above, the privilege of protecting himself by swindling all with whom he comes in contact. It is a noteworthy feature of this “benevolent” law that the only protection afforded by it to the sailor lies in a provision that he shall not suffer by his own fraudulent act. But the ship-owner is “protected” in the possession of his men, and protected also from paying them the high rates of wages hitherto paid them under the guidance of their landlords; the master is “protected” in his violence and brutality to them, as well as “protected” in the enjoyment of their wages when that violence has driven them from him; the mates are “protected” in the pursuit and recapture of them; both master and mates are “protected” in kidnapping sailors at all times and “protected” always from the interference of local magistrates; and, above all and most of all, the Shipping Commissioner is “protected” in the exclusive enjoyment of the shipping business of his port and all the emoluments arising therefrom. But the sailor? As well call a lie the truth, or blasphemy pious, as to call this act, either in whole or in detail, “protection” to him. Such a prostitution of one of the noblest words of the English language to an act begotten in jobbery, chicanery and selfishness is absolutely without parallel.
Still further, this act is obnoxious not only in its centralizing tendencies, in its interference with the legitimate callings of citizens of the various seaports, in its multiplying Federal officers, and in its grinding effect upon the mariner, but, as a natural sequence of all this, it overreaches itself and infringes upon the constitutional and fundamental law. So far as the sailor is concerned, it is one continuous suspension of the habeas corpus! It deprives him of liberty without due process of law, “without first procuring a warrant.” And it adds the infamous permission that this may be done by a mere private citizen.
This law is a curiosity in every possible way. It makes Mr. Duncan arbitrator between the sailor & his employer in cases of dispute. I judge that Mr. Duncan is a person whose decision is easily purchasable. This law makes this person’s decision final & absolute! The sailor cannot appeal from it! Perhaps the reader now perceives the sarcasm which lurks in the title of the law—“for the further protection of seamen.”
Perhaps no more infamous law than this has ever defiled the code of any Christian land in any age. And yet it is the work of a man whose stock in trade is sham temperance, sham benevolence, religious hypocrisy, & a ceaseless, unctuous drip of butteryⒶemendation prayers.
“Mark Twain Once More,” New York World, 25 February 1877, 5, is source text for ‘To the Editor . . . any age’; MS (two partial pages), CtY-BR, is source text for the remainder of the text.
Neider 1961, 177–82; SLC 2014, 103-8.