the principle of uniformity as to impose an unjust burden on the American shipowner, and we do not believe it should do so simply because Great Britain has seen fit to pass a similar act.

We are generally in favor, with slight amendments, of the act as Mr. Edmonds has drawn it, including this deviation clause. We are in favor of this clause, as written, for the very reasons that Mr. Englar says that he does not want the clause in here. I disagree with this gentleman (Mr. Draper) in his interpretation of the clause. I think that the clause is in the interest of the shipowner and against the interest of the shipper. I say it is a clause that the shipowner has got to have, if he is going to be able to carry on trade as it is carried on to-day. And I feel that my friends of the Shpping Board are mistaken in thinking they are going to get any relief that meets the necessities of the trade in a general clause which simply provides for a reasonable deviation.

Mr. NICOLSON. Will you allow me to interject this statement, that we have not been functioning in respect to this bill, in the least from the viewpoint of the interests of the Shipping Board.

Mr. CAMPBELL. Then I stand alone, so far as the ship owners are concerned.

Mr. NICOLSON. The problem has been dealt with generally as it concerned the welfare and general interest of the American merchant marine.

Mr. CAMPBELL. The American merchant marine, or the American shippers-which? I think I stand alone as representing the American shipowning interests. Here is the practical proposition, and how are you going to meet it? Take the trade to the west coast of Africa, take the trade into the Mediterranean, take the trade to Central America, take the trade to the islands, and you will find that all the vessels engaged in those trades in order to live and survive have got to stop at various ports. They will take cargo for a port and they will take the cargo off there and put on board cargo that may be homeward bound. They will go down the west coast of Africa, for instance, and go to a port and deliver cargo, and then they may have to come back to a port somewhat nearer home, where they learn there is some cargo. They are on trading voyages getting cargo where they can. That is a necessity of the business.

Mr. BRAND. When the shipowner operating to the Mediterranean says "We will make only certain stops," do you not think he ought to be bound to do that?

Mr. CAMPBELL. Within reasonable limits; yes.

Mr. BRAND. That is what this does, really.

Mr. CAMPBELL. No, I think not, because you are taking away from us the right to contract. If you pass this bill without a clause in it that permits contracts we can put nothing into our bill of lading that will give us any contractual rights. You are depriving us absolutely of any right to make a contract in respect of any of these shipments.

Mr. HAIGHT. Oh, that is absolutely ridiculous.

Mr. CAMPBELL. The shipowners are deprived absolutely.

Mr. EDMONDS. If you make a contract, that would not be a deviation.

Mr. CAMPBELL. I think the word "deviation" is a misnomer in the situation I want to reach. If the ships are going to run, you

have to make it possible for them to get business that will pay their expenses. Is not that so?

Mr. BRAND. The point I want to know is, when the shipper is shipping stuff out there to the Mediterranean, ought he not to know where the vessel is going to stop?

Mr. CAMPBELL. Surely he ought to know; but if the necessities of the business require the ship to trade from port to port, and to pick up cargo from port to port, and the shipper wants to ship on that kind of a vessel, he ought to be bound by the customs of that kind of trade, and to be permitted to contract accordingly.

Mr. BRAND. If he knows that is going to be the case; but the trouble is they tell you they are not going to go sailing around, and then they do go.

Mr. CAMPBELL. If they are given the right of contract, he will know that; and, if he does not want to sign the contract for shipment upon a vessel which is compelled to engage in that kind of trade in order to survive, he does not have to ship on that kind of vessel.

Mr. NICOLSON. Suppose it is advertised that a certain vessel will sail on a certain date for Constantinople and intermediate ports between New York and Constantinople, and a shipper shipped from New York to Constantinople. Do you mean to say that the enactment of this law would bar you, if you have advertised and inserted in your bill of lading it 'is your intention to stop at intermediate ports that you would not be free to so stop?

Mr. CAMPBELL. I can not contract at all under this bill.
Mr. NICOLSON. I do not agree with you.

Mr. CAMPBELL. I can put nothing in my bill of lading. This is the law: This is the bill of lading, and if I were advertising a voyage from New York to Constantinople via ports, I could not put a pound of cargo upon the ship at any one of those ports for the home-bound voyage without creating a deviation and without creating a deviation which the courts would hold was an unreasonable deviation. And the result of it would be that the shipowner would not only be responsible for the loss which happened to arise from that particular act of deviation, but from the moment of the deviation he becomes an absolute insurer of the cargo, and absolutely liable for loss from whatever cause it may be. The result will be if you impose that law upon the shipowner, that he will not dare take a chance, with a half a million dollar cargo in his ship, of picking up cargo at these intermediate ports for the homeward voyage.

Mr. NICOLSON. I think you must have misunderstood my question, sir, because we are so completely at variance. Take another illustration: Suppose it is advertised, say a vessel from Hamburg and intermediate points, English and French, and you take cargo in the ship consigned to some one in Hamburg via these advertised points, and so shown in your bill of lading. Do you contend that the enactment of this law would preclude you stopping at English and French points?

Mr. CAMPBELL. No; I do not think so.

Mr. NICOLSON. I do not think so. I am sure it would not.

Mr. CAMPBELL. Oh, it would not prevent me from doing that, and this does not affect those kind of services; this does not affect the shipments to the Continent of Europe particularly, it does not

affect shipments to the United Kingdom, and it won't affect shipments to Norway and Sweden, but it does affect these trades where the ships have to trade from port to port and pick up cargoes. Mr. NICOLSON. Could you not say that, sir?

Mr. CAMPBELL. They could proceed in the ordinary course of their voyage from one port to another, in the regular order, but they could not come back to a port; and referring to the very case you told about in your own experience here, I do not think you would find any court that would say it was a reasonable deviation for your ship to have been held there for the oil, as you speak of it. Mr. NICOLSON. But, if you make it clear in the bill of lading, it is your purpose on the voyage which is about to be undertaken that you are going to do that very thing, do you think the enactment of this law would bar your doing it?

Mr. CAMPBELL. I think so; at least there is such uncertainty we do not dare to take a chance on it, because you provide a penalty of $2,000 if we put anything in the bill of lading which is found to be in conflict with this law.

Mr. BLAND. Would such a contract be in conflict with this law? Mr. CAMPBELL. Let me take a practical illustration of what exists to-day: If you apply this to the intercoastal trade, to ships that ply from the east coast to the west coast in the intercoastal trade, some go into the Columbia River to Portland, some go to Grays Harbor, and some into Puget Sound, where they touch at Tacoma, Seattle, Anacortes, Bellingham, Vancouver, Victoria, and Port Angeles. The necessities of the trade require those vessels to deliver cargo at Portland and take on cargo eastbound, and repeat the same thing at those other ports. Yet to-day the shippers are contending that those constitute unreasonable deviations, and the underwriters are refusing to pay losses because a ship happened to go into one of those ports, still with cargo westbound on board, and take on cargo for the eastbound voyage. Now, those are necessities of the trade that the shipowners have got to meet if they are going to keep in the business. If you take away from us the right of contracting with the shipper for such trading, you are going to put upon us a burden that is going to drive us out of many of the trades.

I do not want to stand here in justification of the shipowner who trades from port to port in utter disregard of the rights of shippers, or so as to destroy some cargo he has on board because he thinks he can pick up cargo at another port; but I do stand here and plead for some right of contract on the part of the shipowner which will make it possible for him to carry on these trading voyages in such a way that he can survive in some of these trades. Because, if you do not let him do it you are going to drive him out of the business; that is all there is to it; he is not going to be able to meet the competition.

Mr. BRAND. What does deviation mean? Does it not mean a deviation from what is agreed to in your bill of lading?

Mr. CAMPBELL. That is my understanding.

Mr. NICOLSON. No; it means an unreasonable and uncustomary departure on an agreed voyage.

Mr. BURKE. Is it unreasonable to declare the ports at which he is going to stop, so that the shipper and underwriter may know and

make arrangements and make charges accordingly. What the underwriters object to is not so much the fact a vessel is going to stop at ports if they know it; but the fact is they write a risk on a cargo which they suppose is going to certain ports as directly as it can, and they find it has wandered all around Robin Hood's barn. Now, I have in mind a case where a vessel was going from a North Atlantic port to the port of St. Johns, New Brunswick, which called at a port a few miles from that and then went and made a trading voyage all around Newfoundland, which took them three weeks, and then came back and went into a port where the shippers would not have allowed their cargo to go had they known about it, and they went into that port and the ship was wrecked. That is the kind of things the underwriters object to so strenuously, and the cargo shippers, too. They ship cargo on a vessel and they suppose in a reasonable time it is going to reach destination, and then find it is weeks behind. If they know ahead of time, why all right; but this blanket deviation privilege by which the shipper and the underwriter buy a pig in the poke, without any chance to bargain about it, is the thing we object to.

Mr. CAMPBELL. There is a chance to bargain about it. The shipper does not have to ship on that particular vessel. The world is oversupplied with ships to-day, and he does not have to ship on that particular vessel, and is not under compulsion to sign a bill of lading which contains that blanket clause.

Mr. BURKE. He has a right to know what you are going to do with his cargo, and that you are not going to keep going around, first up and then down, in some cases going back and forth several times, within a few miles of the port.

Mr. CAMPBELL. He does not have to agree to that kind of a clause; if he does agree to that kind of a clause, why he should not object. Mr. BURKE. If he knows he agrees to it, I have no sympathy with him; because he has no complaint.

Mr. CAMPBELL. If he does not agree to it, then it constitutes a deviation which makes that ship liable as an insurer.

Mr. BRAND. That is what it ought to do.

Mr. BURKE. That is what we want.

Mr. CAMPBELL. No; what you seek; you do not want to give us the right to contract at all with respect to trading voyages.. Mr. BURKE. No; we want to know what the contract is.

Mr. CAMPBELL. You will know what the contract is the moment you read your ship's contract.

Mr. BURKE. No; we won't.

Mr. CAMPBELL. If you are running your business, you will certainly know what is in your bill of lading.

Mr. BURKE. No; the bill of lading will say the privilege to call at port to port in either direction, and all that sort of thing, which means absolutely nothing to anybody, unless he has been a sailor on that particular voyage.

Mr. CAMPBELL. Not necessarily so. I think we can provide for the right to contract without giving this board right to contract as it exists to-day.

Mr. BURKE. At one of the hearings we had down here in Washington year or two ago, when this subject was up, one of the men who appeared before the committee exhibited a number of bills of

lading, one of which I remember particularly, because it was one of the most vicious cases I ever saw. That was the Cosmopolitan Steamship Co. It had the most vicious clause that anybody could devise, and no man who had it laid before him would have any idea what it meant until it worked out, and then it would be too late.

Mr. CAMPBELL. I am not seeking to defend that kind of clause. Mr. BURKE. But that is the kind of contract you will have.

Mr. CAMPBELL. I am not seeking to defend those terrifically broad clauses which, as you say, give the shippers no right, no protection, and are all on the ship owner's side; but I am seeking some right of contract and you are taking it away from us. There will be nothing in the bill of lading except this law upon the statute books, which says 66 reasonable deviation," and what will the courts say is "reasonable deviation?"

Mr. BLAND. Does not this give you the right of contract, but simply say you must allow the shipper to know what the contract is, rather than reserving to yourself the right just to change it as you please?

Mr. CAMPBELL. If you will put in here the right to contract, it will; but if you do not put in here the right to contract, it won't, because all you will have is this law.

Mr. SCOTT. You can not deviate, unless you have a contract.

Mr. WHITE. I have never been able to get this into my head, and I want to get it. This section 4, if the amendment suggested by Mr. Nicolson prevails, would read in this fashion:

Any deviation in saving, or attempting to save, life or property at sea, or any reasonable deviation, shall not be deemed to be an infringement or breach of this act, or

Now, to get the context and to get the meaning, I will read in some other word

* *

carriage.

shall not be deemed to be an infringement of the contract of

Now, there is absolutely no limitation there as to what the contract of carriage may be and, as this thing stands now, they can issue a contract of carriage between two ports and with the right to call at any or all intermediate ports, as I see it. I can not see any limitation there.

Mr. BURKE. They must follow out the course that their bill of lading or contract for freight specifies. A deviation is only when they depart from what they have agreed to do.

Mr. WHITE. Absolutely. But supposing that the bill of lading says that the goods shall be transported between New York and Constantinople, with liberty to call at all intermediate ports. Now, there is a whole string of ports all around the Mediterranean, and that might delay that ship six weeks over the reasonable time for making the voyage between New York and Constantinople. There is nothing in your amendment, as you have it, as I see, to prevent that sort of thing.

Mr. NICOLSON. I do not understand there is, sir.

Mr. WHITE. I supposed that was what you were trying to prevent. Mr. CAMPBELL. Take this situation: If these trading voyages are necessary in order that the ship may survive in that trade, and the