Transport: Fink Books

There are some 130,000 seamen in the U. S. merchant marine. Until this year these men have had to pass no examinations in seamanship to get jobs. 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...

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