The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1914-01-31
They are Starved by Con-
gress and Credit is With
held them for Great Work
NEW NAME WOULD
BRING A CHANGE
Coast Guard Service, or Some Such
Title, Looked Upon as More Inspire
ing-OnIy Government Department
That Shows an Actual Profit.
lHN Herbert CoreN..l

New York, Jan. 31.-The landsman
had just been introduced to Captain
j. S. Van Boskerck of the United
States revenue cutter service.
Mighty glad to meet you." said the
landsman, cordially. I've often want
ed 10 meet one OF you fellows"
Captain Van Boskerck looked prop
erly a~ppreciative.
yep" said the landsman. I'm
interested in your work.. l suppose
you have some mighty strenuous adj
ventures when you're chasing those
moonshiners through the mountains"
Which is just as much knowledge
as the average landsman has of the
revenue cutter service. Which is why.
the service wants Il new name right
now. The average landsman concluds
from the revenue" part of the name
that the men of the service either
spend their time pasting bottled in
bond stamps on whiskey bottles or In
searching trunks for struggled laces.
And if he knows a cutter from a full
rugged ship. he is apt to think a cutter
is the sort of sharp-pointed boat he
met last in Marryat'S novels. There 1t
was manned by barefooted seamcn
with long, pullahle forelocks. who
loved their officers dearly.
cutter service is Uncle Sans little
navy. 1t is a combination of road
!,nending gang for tho paths of the
sea and coast police and ambulance
service. During the January blizzard
the revenue cutters rescued twenty
odd schooners end their crews from
Davy Jones' already over-crowded
TO sea again, to lind the derelicts that
had been reported along the sea. lanes.
It may he that $50 lives and $150,000
worth Of property may be credited to
them during the blizzard-which was
the most disastrous storm to the
coastwise shipping in twenty-five
years. .
Starving the Service.
We are a romantic and impression
able people. If il were called ''The
Coast Guard Service VIC would talk
to sea TO ave a bluenOse schooner.
Eut nothing connected with the Unit
ed States revenue has power to stir
the blood. So that the cutter service
is half starved. 1t is short of ships
and men and officers and tools and al
most short of food. And yet 1t is per-
laaps the only one of Uncle Sans nu-
tual profit in dollars and cents. Last
year it cose about $780, 600 to oper-
ate--and saved property valued at
$1,000, 900, not to speak of 327 lives.
Because Of that dull II discouraging
title congress takes about as much
interest in it as congress would in
Carlo. the doctrinal dog.
For ten years the cutter service has
been running on a starvation basis.
W years ago the appropriation was
cut SO hat when the worst winter
storm of a quarter of a century hap
pened, along in January. 1914, the
hfty-year-old Woodbury. - her hull
squirting water at every rivet hole
and her engine of. a strictly museum
type-groaned out to sea to do what
she could. She did it, too. for she
saved the Northland, GOAL laden. The
rigging of the Northland was a solid
block of ice. Every mar had been SO
frost bitten that not n could haul on
Il rope. Thew were not even able to
keep a fire in the galley stove. Ten
hours. perhaps, would have seen the
last of the Northland il it had not
been for this obsolete old cripple that
calamity hobbled out to give a help
ing hand. There are three other cut
tiers almost as old as h Woodbury.,
and the W. others almost as .unsea-
worthy. Because congress will not
replace them they go to sea in every
gale to help others-their rotten hulls
working under them. and their croupy
old engines wheeling and sniff1ing.
Because they are manned by Glass A
seamen they come back again with
rescued ships in tow.
The Work Of the Cutters.
During the winter months the cut
tiers are on constant patrol on the
Atlantic and Pacific seaboards. They
only make port for supplies. When
they are not helping hurt vessels they
are destroying derelicts. The Seneca
and Miami spend the summer in mid
Atlantic, warning shipping of the To-
cation of the drifting ice fields-such
fields as ripped the bottom out of the
Titanic. The Bear carries the law to
the Alaskan natives and pulls iced
wl'alers out of danger. The Thetis