Industry knows only two types of workers who, in years past, were brought frequently to their job in chains — Negroes and shanghaied seamen. In those days only these workers were physically bound to their place of employment — the Negro to his plantation by guards, and the seaman by the watery isolation of his ship. Yours was never as humiliating a condition as chattel slavery, but the abuse of your freedom, and dignity of personality, were corrosive and destructive.

The sailors wrote a luminous page of history when they used their mighty strength and unity to civilize their work conditions. Everyone benefitted — other labor groups as well as employers because the violence and instability of the sea life of old could not be a basis for a great commerce. Nor could maltreated, brutalized men be entrusted with the multimillion-dollar ships of the modern era; nor with the safety of millions of passengers who now make the seas a highway.