SAFETY AND COMFORT AT SEA

The present-day sailor has a princely life compared with that of his predecessors of the beginning and middle of the last century.  Those men were ill-paid, ill-fed, and for the most part brutally treated.  The whole system of dealing with seamen was a villainous wrong, which stamps the period with a dirty blot, at which the British people should be ashamed to look.  What awful crimes were permitted by the old legislatures of agricultural plutocrats!  Ships were allowed to be sent to sea in an unseaworthy condition.  Men were forced to go in them for a living, and scores of these well-insured coffins were never seen or heard of again after leaving port.  Their crews, composed sometimes of the cream of manhood, were the victims of a murderous indifference that consigned them to a watery grave; and the families who survived the wholesale assassination were left as legacies of shame to the British people, who by their callousness made such things possible.  Whole families were cast on the charity of a merciless world, to starve or survive according to their fitness.  Political exigencies had not then arisen.  The people were content to live under the rule of a despotic aristocracy, and so a devastating game of shipowning was carried on with yearly recurring but unnoticed slaughter.  In one bad night the billows would roll over hundreds of human souls, and no more would be heard of them, except, perhaps, in a short paragraph making the simple announcement that it was feared certain vessels and their crews had succumbed to the storms of such and such dates.  “Subscription lists for sailors’ wives, mothers, and orphans!  Good heavens!  What is it coming to? They have no votes!  What, then, do they want with subscriptions?” “But you subscribe for colliery, factory, railroad, and other shore accidents.  What difference does it make how the bereavement occurs?” “Votes make the difference—­the importance of that should not be overlooked!”

In disdain of the commonest rights of humanity this nefarious business was allowed to flourish triumphant.  The bitter wail of widows and orphans was silenced by the clamour for gold until all nature revolted against it.  The earth and the waters under the earth seemed to call aloud for the infamy to be stayed.  The rumbling noise of a vigorous agitation permeated the air.  Strenuous efforts were made to block its progress.  Charges of an attempt to ruin the staple industry of the country were vociferously proclaimed and contemptuously unheeded.  Parliament was made the centre of intrigue, whereby it was expected to thwart the plans of the reformers, and throw legislation back a decade, but the torrent rushed along, with a spirit that broke through every barrier.  Even the great Jew, Benjamin Disraeli, funked further evasion and opposition, after the memorable evening when Samuel Plimsoll electrified the House, and stirred up the nation, by charging the Prime Minister with the responsibility