KIDNAPPING.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13420, 18 March 1914, Page 7

KIDNAPPING.

New York in the most notorious "shanghai" port in the world, affirms Illr Andrew Turuseth, president of the American National Seamen's Union. "Another Titanic disaster may happen at any moment,' 'he told the Nou York "Evening, Post," because of the unfitness of crews to copa with such ;'.ri emergency as confronted that veswL * '.'Foreign competition, with its. cheaper -Ixibouf1, will ruin the American mercantile marine of the Seamen's Bill is not enacted into law. "Stewards and other incompetents do not guarantee safety to passengers, while the insurance companies guarantee the companies, and the travelling public is at the merry of tho- greed} companies, who <!o not w;:nt to pay a higher wage fuv protection to their passengers." Elaborating on the foregoing Mr Turuseth .f--.n;:l : 'T'x> sessions of the Safety C-oiigr wore- private, and I am not nt liberty to discuss them until, ai'ter i : :ivc mado my report of President .Wilson. "At present Now Yoik is the worst 'shanghai' port on earth, and sailors here who got into debt to boardinghouse keepers are -bought and sold like slaves. Under tho Bill in Congress, such conditions would not exist, for the wages paid hero and the. protection all sailors?, or -whatever nationality, would abstract sailors from all over the world and they would put an cud to the 'shanghai' system. This protection.-would--also'help rather than injure,- the 'American- marine, for it would have its pick of men, who could leave their ships and iake up American posts at a higher wage. "The steamship and steamboat companies are fighting the Bill because they are protected by tlvsir insurance and care nothing for their passengers. They are satisfied to have stewards man their' lifeboats rather than pay competent, sailors for the work. "In my , opinion the Safety Congress in England accomplished nothing of importance, and I could not,, in consistency with my beliefs, remain a member of the body, so I resigned and cawo home."