The Hawaiian gazette., 1915-06-29
Pacific Mail Withdrawal

lTHE approaching withdrawal OF the PacthC
L Mail from the Pacific trade is being COM
mented on at length in the Eastern press, where
the people apparently take more interest in the
matter than Honolulu does although the with
drawal Of the Pacific Mail feet will seriously Grip
} pie the tourist trade Of the Islands. The New
York Tribune for one, says:
"The disastrous consequences OF the La Toilette
Seamen's Act already apparent in the an
| nouncemcnt made by the directors of the Pacific
Mail Steamship Company. These consequences
were clearly forcSeen long ago by shipping men,
and will cause surprise to any one except pos
sibly to some few illadvised and misguided friends
of organized labor and to certain politicians who
chose rather to- follow their leaders bndy than
to give heed to the warnings of the men most
competent to Judge of the merits of this short
sighted and mischievous piece of legislation.
"What is to be the ultimate fate of the Pacific
Mail is still uncertain. The ships may be sold or
leased or turned account in some service where
the restrictions Of the Seamen's Act will be less
deadly That is question which concerns the
directors and the stockholders of the company the
point of interest to the American people is the
threatened extinction of the American flag in the
Pacific Ocean. The inevitable result of the pre-
posterous measure designed ostensibly in the in
terest of American labor is to deliver over trans
pacific trade to the Japanese. The provisions of
the seamen'S act such as only be met by
the subsidized Japanese steamship lines and in the
natural course of events the Japanese will soon
acquire a monopoly of the trade between our Pa
cihc ports and the Orient.
~ "At present ships engaged in this trade are
manned largely with Asiatic crews, but the new
law provides that ship shall be permitted to
depart from any port of the United States unless
she has on board crew not less than seventy five
per centum of which in each department thereof
are able to understand any order given by the Of
hcers OF, such vessel Such crews, it has been
pointed out, simply unobtainable. Mr..
Schwerin, the general manager of the Pacific Mail
company insists that not only would it be impos-
sible to find sufficiency of fremen and trimmers
speaking English luently, but that there would
be the same difficulty in securing due proportion
Of men cOnversant with German, French or Span
ish, So that the language qualification would pro-
hibt ships of other natiOnahties engaging in this
trade with Oriental crews we'll ships under
American registry, while it would not apply to
Japanese ships, offcered and manned solely by Jap
anese, where the entire ships company speak a
common language, and so in every respect comply
with all the terms of the bill
And this is not the only clause that tells against
the American shipowner though it is the most
tarreachng. 1t was not without due deliberation
that the Pacific Mail company came to the con-
clusiOn that it could not survive the intolerable
conditions of the new law The cost to the service
has been carefully calculated and is estimated to
amount to an additional expenditure of $500, 042
Until two years ago the company had annual
deficit; in 1913 the surplus was $2OOOO and in
1914 100000. 1t is manifest that further expen-
diture in the interest of mad legislation cannot
prohtably be borne. Short of repeating the sea-
mems act there is nothing to do but to submit 20
the inevitable and suffer the Japanese to take pos
session Of the Pacific trade"