II
After his services to the miners of West Virginia Senator Kern’s most distinguished service to the toilers was in the part he played in securing the enactment of the Seamen’s bill, which was signed by President Wilson in the spring of 1915. The story of that measure reads like a romance. One of the unaccountable neglects of a humane civilization had been its utter indifference to the insufferable wrongs of the men who “go out upon the sea in ships.” The toilers of the land had been lifted from the degradation once associated with labor, but the toilers of the sea were left in servitude, not only with the knowledge but with the active connivance of governments. Underpaid, improperly fed, they were so much the slaves of the masters of the ships that a member of a crew deciding in port to sever his connection with the vessel was treated as the fugitive slaves before the war—hunted down by police officers and returned as escaped criminals to their masters. This impossible life gradually drove the more competent seamen from the waters and the traveling public paid the penalty in increased disasters. From 1860 until 1914 every succeeding record of lives lost at sea was lengthened, notwithstanding the better equipment of the boats. The rule that the wage fixed should be the wage paid at the port of employment led the ship owners to the manning of their vessels in ports where the scale of living was lowest, and the result was that the poorest seamen were entrusted with the lives of travelers. The ship owners only concerned themselves with profits. One of the reasons for the decline of our merchant marine was the refusal of Americans to take service on ships at the meager wage paid, and we entered into a treaty to arrest, detain and return deserters from ships in American ports. Thus we deliberately entered into a conspiracy against ourselves; for if the men employed in low-wage ports deserted in an American port and the master of the ship was forced to man his vessel here he would have to pay the higher wage and thus the equalization of wages for seamen on a higher plane would result. We helped to keep the scale of wages down below the American standard and thereby deliberately forced American sailors from the sea. Before President Wilson signed the Seamen’s bill of 1917 the sailors of the world were slaves.
The battle to right this wrong was waged for years through the patience and perseverance of one of the most remarkable lobbyists that ever haunted the capitol at Washington. Only a Victor Hugo could adequately tell the tale of Andrew Furseth.
Born in Norway, the Viking blood in his veins, he went to sea at the age of sixteen. He loved the sea. It was a hereditary passion. Standing on the shore and looking out to where the sky and waters met he thought he saw in the life of the sea the free life—and he had a passion for freedom. He soon discovered the tragic truth—he was the slave of the master of the ship.
“I saw men abused, beaten into insensibility,” he said. “I saw sailors try to escape from brutal masters and from unseaworthy vessels upon which they had been lured to serve. I saw them hunted down and thrown into the ship’s hold in chains. I know the bitterness of it all from experience.”
And he had seen over-insured and under-manned ships go down at sea because greedy owners would not furnish skilled seamen or provide lifeboats. He had lived to see white labor driven out by the shipping trust to make way for oriental slaves, and the sea power moving unmistakably to the orient as a result.
This condition was all the more bitter to Andrew Furseth, for he knew and loved the sea and its romantic history and knew that seamen had once been free men. He determined to dedicate his life to doing for the seamen what Lincoln did for the slaves, and he landed on the Pacific coast of America.
“For the seamen of the world,” wrote John L. Mathews in Everybody’s Magazine, “the most important event of the nineteenth century was the coming ashore of Andrew Furseth.”
His first step was to challenge the greed of the shipping interests by organizing the seamen along the coast. The organization was small and its membership pitifully poor, and it faced the bitter hostility of powerful interests and a prejudiced or subsidized press.
Knowing that the seamen of the world would not be freed by his little organization alone, he went to Washington as its representative. That was in 1894. The following twenty-one years of Furseth’s life mark the greatness of the man. So low had the seaman fallen in the estimation of the world that this man with no other motive than to secure the enactment of legislation was under police espionage and for years was shadowed by detectives. His persecutors wasted money—his life was in the open. Year after year he pressed his case on members of the congress. Many were openly hostile. Some mildly curious. None greatly interested. Sometimes his bill was introduced and quietly smothered in committee. Sometimes he could find no one to present it. Men of less heroic mould have succumbed to despair. Furseth never despaired. He never stormed at fate. He persevered. He was like the character in Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea.
Working for a ridiculously small salary, when hard times came upon the country he voluntarily cut his own pay. With no small vices to feed, he found he could exist on next to nothing in a sailors’ boarding house. Asked once if he had laid anything aside for old age, he made an answer that deserves to live:
“When my work is finished, I hope to be finished. I have made no provision against old age, and I shall borrow no fears from time.”
At length he forced attention. The Democratic party in its Baltimore convention incorporated a plank in its platform which pledged the party to the abrogation of treaties obligating the United States to hunt down and return as criminals the deserters from foreign ships in American ports and to general legislation in the interest of the seamen. Senator Lafollette introduced the Seaman’s bill.
That, however, was only a beginning and did not necessarily signify anything. The bill was certain to encounter the most bitter opposition of the most powerful interests, and senators naturally ultra-conservative were certain to find plausible reasons for opposition in the protests of foreign governments. The only hope was in enlisting the active sympathy and interest of an influential leader of the majority, and Furseth was urged to present his case to Senator Kern.
I shall let Furseth tell the story of his first call on Kern:
“Shortly after the senator came to the senate I went to him and asked his permission to tell him about the seamen. He had no time then, but told me to come to his hotel. Upon my arrival at the appointed time I told him it would take me at least twenty minutes to give him some idea of what I had to say. He told me to go ahead. I did and I was with him for about an hour and a half. In a quiet easy way he encouraged me to talk, and I told him about the seaman’s daily life on the vessel, but more so on the shore. At sea, the terrible quarters, the ceaseless toil, the poor food, the general treatment and the longing to get away from the life which was degraded by involuntary servitude and a feeling of helplessness. On shore, the power of the Crimp to dictate our wages and take away what we were to earn in the form of advance or ‘allotment to the original creditor,’ as the thing was called; the power to compel us to go to sea in any vessel and with any kind of men—destitute poor devils who set our wages when we were hired and whose work we had to do at sea because they could not. With it all a feeling that we were forgotten by God and held in bitter contempt by men on shore. When I stopped he would ask a question and set me going again, and then he said—‘I shall see whether we can not help you.’
“And he certainly did. I tried not to go to him too often; but it was often and he was always kind and encouraging. I always left him with more hope in my heart, and sometimes I needed it sorely. If God ever placed upon the shoulders of men a part of the burdens of others the senator was surely one of those men. My burden was always lighter and my heart more free when I left him.
“There never was anything that he could personally do to help getting the Seaman’s bill through that he did not do. He helped to get the bill considered. He helped to get it passed. He saved it when the London Convention and the treaty adopted there was about to strangle it for good. If that treaty had been adopted the Seamen’s bill could never have been passed. That treaty was designed to keep the Americans from the sea, and if the United States now has the men needed or is able to get them, not only the seamen, but this nation owes the thanks therefor to Senator Kern.”
After the bill had passed both branches of the congress and went to the president for his signature the most remarkable efforts were made to persuade President Wilson to veto it. These efforts were made by the most powerful influences that think in terms of money rather than in terms of humanity. The National Chamber of Commerce took an active part in condemnation of the act. Delegations called at the White House to assure the president that the law would destroy American commerce.
It was at this juncture that Senator Kern rendered his last great service to the seamen. At the head of seven or eight senators he called at the White House to urge the president to sign the bill. It was signed on March 4th.
The Seamen’s law, which is the Magna Charta of seamen’s rights, would sooner or later have been enacted because ordinary humanity demanded it, but the interest of Senator Kern in its passage unquestionably hastened the breaking of the chains of the slaves of the sea. No one was in the position to proportion the credit that Furseth was and it is enough for the historian to know that the three men who received in largest measure the gratitude of the old Norseman were President Wilson, Robert M. Lafollette and John W. Kern. One year after the law had gone into effect, and two months after Senator Kern’s defeat for re-election to the senate, the man whose “coming ashore” was the “greatest event of the nineteenth century” to the seamen of the world wrote:
“Washington, D. C., Dec. 31, 1916.
“Hon. John W. Kern, U. S. Senate:
“My Dear Senator—The seamen have lived through one year in freedom, in hope, and in gratitude to you. On their behalf and for myself I wish you a blessed New Year and all the happiness that can come to those who feel the pain of others. May God in his mercy to us and to all who toil preserve you in health and strength to fight on for man’s freedom.
“Faithfully and respectfully yours,
“Andrew Furseth.”