18 SETTLEMENT FOR ACCIDENTS TO AMERICAN SEAMEN

outof and in the course of his employment no matter where it occurred,
provided the injury resulted in sufficient disability, would be compensable.

? Section 12 (b) provides in reference to (a) that “Such notice shall
be in writing, shall contain the name and address of the employee
and a statement of the time, place, nature, and cause of the injury,
or death, and shall be signed by the employee or by some person in
his behalf, or in case of death, by any person claiming to be entitled
to compensation for such death or by a person on his behalf.”
Obviously many accidents might occur in which it would be impossible
 for the seaman to make a report within 30 days after the
accident occurred. If such notice were not signed by the injured it
must be signed by some one in his behalf, which would mean that were
a seaman injured on the Indian Ocean in all probability he must
have a representative in the United States who will, upon notification,
 take care of his interests and serve the properly signed notice
with the deputy commissioner. Here again the question of what
district the accident may have occurred in arises and it 1s not hard to
conceive the difficulties that would follow an effort to apply the above
provisions of the longshoremen’s act to seamen. It is assumed that
these conditions would be obviated if the law were applied to seamen.
In the determination of the average wage the longshoremen’s act
specifies the methods to be used in the computations. The application
 of these provisions in this study have been disregarded and the
wage rate as specified for the occupation in which the injured seaman
was employed at the time of his injury plus an allowance of $30 for
food and $15 for quarters per month have been used in meaking all
computations, except for some seamen employed on harbor craft
who do not receive food and quarters in addition to the money rate,
and also where the seaman was working as a work-a-way at the time
of injury. In the latter case the rate applying to his regular occupation,
 plus the allowances above stated, has been applied.
Section 6 (a) of the longshoremen’s act provides that—
No compensation shall be allowed for the first seven days of disability, * * *
Provided, however, That in case the injury results in disability of more than
forty-nine days, the compensation shall be allowed from the date of disability.
The waiting period which has a definite function in all compensation
 laws would present a rather unusual problem were it applied to
seamen. The provision is designed mainly to lessen the opportunity
for malingering and at the same time to develop precaution and safer
methods. If the seaman were to receive wages to the end of the
voyage, in about 40 per cent of compensable cases the waiting period,
if applied, would fall somewhere between the middle and the end of
the actual period of disability. Hence, if a waiting period were applied
 at the end of the rid for-which the seaman receives wages it
could not perform a clearly defined function and the bureau has therefore
 computed compensation from the date that wages ceased to the
date the seaman was able to resume work in every case. The only
function left the waiting period would be to prevent an award from
exceeding the irreducible minimum of expense in the administration
of each case adjudicated.
Other necessary considerations in applying such an act to seamen
would be the requirements for satisfactory evidence, especially in
cases where the seaman was left in a hospital in a foreign port and