Page:The Blight of Insubordination.djvu/35

27 Fifty years ago the greatest opponents of high professional education were—and someone has said still are—the masters and mates. What is the result? The market at the present time is simply flooded with certificated officers, which the shipowner in his wisdom took care to provide for by his own foresight in arranging for cheap labour; for we do not hesitate to state that the shipowners have managed to play their game so well in conjunction with the Board of Trade, who have discriminated in their favour by keeping the standard of education required for the examination for certificates at the very lowest possible level consistent with any degree of competency, and by the admission of foreigners as candidates for these certificates, that the young British officer is hopelessly handicapped at the start. A shipowner. can, if he cares to, man his ship entirely with certificated master mariners, and in any case can toss a man aside like an old boot if he shows any independence of spirit, and does not kotow enough to please them, sure, from their experience, of having an immense crowd from which to choose his successor; for such is the pitiable condition of subserviency in the merchant service where the men concerned have allowed the professional status to be lowered, their privileges abolished, their wages reduced, until it is no longer possible to make a single term with the autocrats of the offices where ships are managed. They must just take what is offered, and be thankful to their patrons that it is no worse. If their lot falls in pleasant places, and they are treated decently, not to say liberally—competition does not permit of munificence— they may bless the star of their nativity, and shake hands with themselves over their good luck, for it is not by any means the lot of all. Misfortune may overtake a careful man at sea, when chance intervenes against measures which a shipmaster will have taken in accordance with his judgment, but which do not always succeed, or commend themselves to his employers. After, perhaps, years of service he is told by someone to go, that his services are no longer required. Nor is there any formal dismissal in the matter, for there is no obligation to do so, and many a smart shipmaster has received his congé through the medium of the office boy, and away he goes, as it were, just pour encourager les autres!

In no other branch of the public services is there such damnable, pernicious treatment. The shipmaster is a public servant, licensed by the servant of the public, the Board of Trade. It is not right that he should be at the mercy of private malevolence without appeal, because it be not enacted that a master may demand an inquiry into his own conduct.