CHAPTER III

ORGANIZATION

For descriptive purposes, the Bureau of Navigation may be said to comprehend six primary administrative divisions: (1) General administration; (2) radio service; (3) navigation inspection; (4) enforcement; (5) shipping service; and (6) collectors and surveyors of customs.

General Administration. This division comprises the office of the Commissioner of Navigation at Washington, and includes the following officers and employees as authorized in the act of March 28, 1922 (Pub. No. 183, 67th Congress), for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1923: Commissioner of Navigation, Deputy Commissioner of Navigation, Chief Clerk, Clerk to the Commissioner, twenty-four clerks, two stenographers and typists temporarily employed, two messengers, and one adjuster of measurements.

The Commissioner of Navigation is appointed, without term, by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. The law provides that the Secretary of Commerce shall have power to transfer from existing bureaus or divisions of the Department of Commerce one clerk, to be designated as Deputy Commissioner of Navigation, to act with the full powers of the Commissioner during the latter's absence from his official duty for any cause.

The duties of the Commissioner are those of exercising a general superintendence of the commercial marine and merchant seamen of the United States, except so far as vessels and seamen are not, under existing laws, subject to the supervision of any other officer of the government. This exception, however, reduces greatly the apparent power of the Commissioner. Thus the SteamboatInspection Service has charge not merely of the inspection of vessels and their equipment but also of the examination and licensing of officers and seamen of the merchant marine. The duties of the Commissioner with respect to the various activities of the bureau,

have already been set forth in the preceding chapter, but, for the sake of convenience, may be brought together in the following enumeration:

1. The decision of all questions relating to the issue of registers, enrollments, and licenses of vessels, and the filing and preserving of these documents.

2. The supervision of the laws relating to the admeasurement of vessels, the assigning of signal letters and official numbers, and all questions of interpretation growing out of the execution and administration of the laws pertaining thereto.

3. Decision of questions relating to the collection and refunding of tonnage taxes.

4. Authorizing changes in the names of vessels.

5. Supervision of the action of shipping commissioners and regulation of their offices and mode of conducting business.

6. Preparation annually of a list of the vessels of the United States merchant marine, with details as to official number, signal letters, names, rig, tonnage, home port, etc.

7. Preparation annually of a report concerning the increase of vessels of the United States, by building or otherwise, specifying their number, rig, and motive power.

8. Investigation of the operation of the laws relative to navigation and preparation annually of a report to the Secretary of Commerce noting such particulars as may, in his judgment, admit of improvement or may require amendment.

To assist the Commissioner in the work of supervising the laws relative to the admeasurement of vessels, Congress appropriated $3000, by the act of March 4, 1913 (37 Stat. L., 739, 786), for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1914, "to enable the Commissioner of Navigation to secure uniformity in the admeasurement of vessels, including the employment of an adjuster of admeasurements at a salary not to exceed $2100, purchase and exchange of admeasuring instruments, traveling and incidental expenses." This appropriation was made at the request of the Commissioner, in his annual report for 1912, who proposed the creation of the office of "adjuster of measurements," directly responsible to him, who would proceed from port to port, correcting divergent practices and differences in the construction of terms, and giving instructions where needed.

Another officer to assist the adjuster in his greatly increased work was requested of Congress in the estimates submitted by the

bureau for the fiscal year 1917, and in his annual report for 1921 the Commissioner of Navigation went further in proposing a small staff of trained ship surveyors who could assist in the settlement of questions relating to the measurement of the hulls and superstructures of vessels. Aside from a nominal increase in the lump sum appropriation for "securing uniformity in the admeasurement of vessels" granted in the act of May 19, 1920 (41 Stat. L., 631, 680), and continued in subsequent appropriation acts, Congress has not, as yet, taken cognizance of the recommendations of the Commissioner. Reporting on the work of this branch of the administrative machinery of the bureau for the fiscal year 1921, the Commissioner stated:

The Bureau of Navigation has made considerable progress in securing more uniform and accurate measurement of ships, but the field force is under the Treasury Department, and control of it, so far as possible, is a matter of comity between the departments rather than of orderly administration.

Radio Service. Under the act of June 24, 1910, requiring radio apparatus on certain passenger-carrying vessels, the Radio Service was organized on July 1, 1911, composed of three inspectors, with headquarters at New York, Baltimore, and San Francisco. The work of these wireless-ship inspectors consisted of: (1) Personal inspections of wireless apparatus on steamships subject to the act; and (2) examination of wireless-ship operators and issue of certificates of skill in radio-communication to those who passed such examination. In the work of examination of wireless operators the inspectors were materially aided through the coöperation of the Navy Department, which provided for such examinations from time to time at the government navy-yards, which were equipped with wireless apparatus and operators. Following the passage of the act of July 23, 1912, extending the above statute, and the act of August 13, 1912, to regulate radio-communication, the administrative machinery to carry out these laws and the Berlin Radiotelegraphic Convention, which was ratified by the United States Senate on April 3 of that year, was consolidated. The entire United States was divided for the purpose into nine districts, under direct charge of the radio inspectors, with head

quarters at the principal seaports of their respective districts. Office accommodations for the radio inspectors, with the consent of the Treasury Department, were obtained in the offices of the collectors of customs. The act of 1912 regulating radio-communication imposed upon the inspectors, in addition to their duties with respect to the inspection of wireless apparatus on shipboard and the examination and certification of wireless-ship operators, the task of inspecting and licensing public, commercial, and amateur land stations and also the examination and licensing of operators therefor. During the fiscal year of 1914, the above work was performed by a force consisting of one chief inspector and ten inspectors, with the assistance, from time to time, of stenographers and typists.

The statutory duties of radio inspectors, as briefly outlined by the Commissioner of Navigation in his annual report for 1914, now consist of "the inspection of the apparatus and operators on ship stations, American and foreign, and at coast stations, commercial, experimental, and amateur; of the license of American stations, ship and shore, and of the several classes of operators; and, finally, of general assistance and coöperation in securing improvements in apparatus and raising the standard of operators." In addition to these duties, the radio inspectors assisted in the training of men during the war period to meet the unprecedented demand for radio operators. Due to the manning of merchant ships with enlisted men of the navy as radio operators and the closing of amateur and commercial stations by executive order, the work of the radio service did not necessitate any material increase in its personnel during 1917 and 1918, but the return to a pre-war basis and the withdrawal of naval radio operators from merchant ships early in 1919, together with the unusual number of new ships built under government supervision and ownership but subject to the same laws and regulations governing wireless apparatus and licensing of radio operators, necessitated an immediate and large increase in the number of inspectors and clerical assistance for them.

A deficiency appropriation of $20,000 was granted by Congress in the act of November 4, 1919 (41 Stat. L., 327, 340), permitting the temporary employment of twenty additional inspectors for

about six months of the fiscal year 1922, and this increase was continued by the appropriation act for 1921. An appropriation exceeding that for 1921 by almost 100 per cent was requested for the fiscal year 1922 in the estimates submitted to Congress by the bureau, but Congress failed to grant any increase for the work of the service in the general appropriation act. A deficiency appropriation for the fiscal year 1922 was voted by Congress in the act of June 16, 1921 (42 Stat. L., 29, 47), and the act of March 28, 1922 (Pub., No. 183, 67 Cong.), making appropriations for the Department of Commerce for the fiscal year 1923, granted an additional increase of $50,000 over the total amount available for this service during the previous fiscal year.

The twenty-six permanent radio inspectors employed in the work of the service at the close of the fiscal year 1921 were distributed among the various administrative districts into which the territory of the United States is divided, according to the volume of work required. The following are the administrative districts, with the principal office for each district at the customhouse of the port named:

1. Boston: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut.

2. New York: New York (County of New York, Staten Island, Long Island, and counties on the Hudson River to and including Schenectady, Albany, and Rensselaer) and New Jersey (counties of Bergen, Passaic, Essex, Union, Middlesex, Monmouth, Hudson, and Ocean).

3. Baltimore: New Jersey (all counties not included in second district), Pennsylvania (counties of Philadelphia, Delaware, all counties south of the Blue Mountains, and Franklin County), Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, District of Columbia.

4. Savannah: North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Porto Rico.

5. New Orleans: Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico.

6. San Francisco: California, Hawaii, Nevada, Utah, Arizona. 7. Seattle: Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming.

8. Detroit: New York (all counties not included in second district), Pennsylvania (all counties not included in third district), West Virginia, Ohio, Michigan (Lower Peninsula).