REPORT OF AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE COMMISSION. 19

Nor do the temperaments and traditions of the composite races that man the ships
serve to correct these deficiencies. The service is compulsory, not voluntary, and a
200d portion of the crews is drawn from the interior. The merchant marine is relatively
 too unimportant to provide a proper nucleus of seamen, and the consequence
is that many of the men serving on board ship have no sea aptitude, and are found
afloat only because they have drawn an unlucky number in the conscription.
Russia exhausted her best officers and trained men in the first squadron
 whose ships now lie sunk at Port Arthur or hide dismantled in the
neutral harbors of the Yellow Sea. It isnot comfortable to think that
but for our unbroken victories in the hundred days’ war with Spain
Russia’s experience with the Baltic squadron might have been our own.
It is the evidence of the admiral commanding on the coast of Cuba
in that war that the United States had set afloat all its educated officers
and skilled seamen in its first battle line, and that if a reverse had come
there would have been no crews to man another fleet, even had the new
ships been available.
At the present time it is well known that new ships and good ships
are being laid up at the navy-yards because there are no officers for
them, and because the regular navy quota of enlisted men is insufficient
for the demands of routine peace service. Representative Richard
Wayne Parker, of New Jersey, who has given much thought to this
question of a naval reserve, made an able presentation of the case at
one of the Washington hearings in November, and for his zeal and
information the Commission offers sincere acknowledgment.
THE NAVAL VOLUNTEERS.

The bill as drafted by the Commission proposes, as the first essential
step in the rehabilitation of our merchant shipping, to create a force
of naval volunteers composed of the best officers and men of our merchant
 ships and deep-sea fishing vessels, and, having created this force,
which must necessarily be small at first, to provide means for its
healthy and sure expansion. As an inducement to enroll, and in frank
recognition of the peculiar national value of a thorough-going seaman,
a substantial retainer is offered ranging from $100 a year for the master
 or chief engineer of a large steamship to $25 for a sailor or fireman
and $15 for a boy. It is understood, of course, that officers and men
shall receive regular pay, beside this retainer, during their period of
actual naval instruction, and the terms and conditions of this period,
which at first can not be long, and the regulations and qualifications of
the service are left, as they ought to be, to he prescribed by the Secretary
 of the Navy. Enrollment in the naval volunteers is open to
officers and men now in the coastwise service, but it is stipulated that
bo receive the retainer they must have spent at least six months of the
year in the foreign trade or deep-sea fisheries.
A SMALL FORCE TO START WITH.

It is estimated by the Commissioner of Navigation, in his annual
report for 1903, that “all American vessels on salt water which go out
of sight of land for any time during the year would be fully manned by
50,000 men, including masters.” Somewhat less than one-half, or
perhaps 20,000, of these officers and seamen are native or naturalized
American citizens. Out of these 20,000 officers and men probably not
more than one-half would be eligible for naval volunteer service. and