175 The Seamen’s Recruitment Committee. TRANSPORT SERVICES. The question of the recruitment; of seamen in India came under the consideration of Government and the Indian Legislature in 1921 on the adoption by the Second Session of the International Labour Conference at Genoa in 1920 of a Draft Convention regarding facilities for finding employment for seamen. The Legislature did not recommend ratifica- tion of the Convention, but suggested that “an examination should be undertaken without delay of the methods of recruitment of seamen at the different ports, in order that it may be definitely ascertained whether abuses exist and whether those abuses are susceptible of remedy ”. As a result, a committee, known as the Seamen’s Recruitment Committee, was appointed in 1922. At this time recruitment was conducted in Bombay through a single firm of licensed brokers. In Calcutta the principal company concerned carried on recruitment through special servants of its own and the other companies utilised the services of one of the local licensed brokers. The serangs and butlers were selected by the officers concerned and the latter were also responsible for approving the crew ; but in practice the selection of the crew rested mainly with the serangs and butlers. After investigations in Bombay and Calcutta, the Commit- tee found that this system had led to grave abuses and were unani- mous in recommending an entirely new system which did not involve the employment of intermediaries. They recommended the setting up of employment bureaux under officers with practical marine experience. Method of Recruitment Recommended. As regards the method of recruitment, the Committee recom- mended that, in the case of the leading ratings (i.e., serangs and butlers), the shipping companies should be allowed to nominate anyone who had been discharged from a ship of the same line not more than three months before, but if they failed to do so, the selection was to be made from a fair proportion of men from the top of the roster maintained by the bureau for that line. The object of this recommendation was, as stated by the Committee, “ to encourage lines to give men, as far as possible, continuity of employment and to ensure that each man on the list shall have his claims regularly considered ”. So far as seamen were concerned, the Committee recognised that in Bombay the crews, especially the deck crews, were closely attached to particular serangs, frequently coming from the same or neighbouring villages and forming almost a family on board. They therefore proposed to interfere with the serangs’ power of nomination only in the case of a particular type of crew. In Calcutta, on the other hand, they believed that; there was no close attachment between the serang and his crew, and proposed a system whereby the seamen would be taken by roster from a register maintained for the line concerned and from a general register. At the same time shipowners were bo be free to take men who had been discharged from ships of the same line not more than a month previously. This scheme, had it worked satisfactorily, would have tended to encourage continuity of employment by giving the shipowners the choice between selecting the crew from