THE PILOTS UNION
That evening we went to the Roosevelt Blue Room for 8 o'clock dinner and floor show. I noticed a modestly, yet well-dressed bald headed, rather heavy-set man of about 60 eating alone at the next table. The waiters all knew him as did many of the customers who passed.
I said to him, "You are alone this evening. Why not come over and join us in dessert?"
He replied, "I shall be delighted, and consider it an hon'r to be asked to join you and this charmin' young lady, but you must excuse me from dessert." Turning to his waiter, he said, "Bring the bucket over here if you will, Pierre." The bucket was a bucket of Burgundy, fairly well gone. Naturally he asked us to share it, and showed no resentment at our refusal.
It took only a few minutes to discover that our new friend was a "trifle high," and gaining rather than losing altitude, as time went on. He was a river pilot of long standing, and simply superb at modest elevation.
Putnam County is a bit shy on pilots, but not New Orleans. If I get the facts right, outbound and inbound ships have three pilots—river, bar and the ship's regular pilot. The last takes charge only when the ship is at sea. . . On leaving the wharf, the river pilot is in charge until the bar of the Mississippi is reached—the narrows or jetties where the river empties into the Gulf some 90 miles below New Orleans. . . The "bar pilot" steers the ship through the narrows and out into the Gulf. It is then that the ship's regular pilot takes charge.
It is these bar pilots who have a unique organization, virtually a family affair. To become a bar pilot you must either be born into the family or marry into it. Talk about your tight little corporations and monopolies! Bricklayers and other trade unions are accused of limiting memberships and daily numbers of bricks to be laid in order to hike wages. This "union" does the same thing by means of a sort of birth control feature. It's a honey of a trust. These bar pilots, I hear from pretty reliable source, get from twelve to fifteen thousand per year and work about six months of the year.
Last Tuesday morning, the Director of Commerce of the Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans called to invite us on a tour of the harbor, along with some eight or 10 shippers. . . New Orleans shipping is tremendous, second only to New York. I casually mentioned San Francisco and was told that New Orleans had more shipping than the combined West Coast. Generally speaking, it draws the territory drained by the Mississippi River. New Orleans has 10 to 12 miles of wharves. On the trip we surely saw more than 100 ships, barges, ferries and other big water craft. Two ships were unloading thousands of cases of pineapples, so our local A&P store should be stocked with pineapple for you by now.