ek's good drunk in port. And when the barrooms and the women
and all the waterfront sharks have stripped 'em of their last red cent,
then the crimps collect an advance allotment from their future wages to
ship 'em off to sea again."

"That's not true in _this_ port," I retorted, eagerly catching him up on
the one point that I knew was wrong. "They don't allow crimps in New
York any more."

"No," Joe answered grimly. "The port of New York has got reformed, it's
become all for efficiency now. The big companies put up money for a kind
of a seamen's Y. M. C. A. where they try to keep men sober ashore, and
so get 'em back quick into holes like these, in the name of Christ.

"But there's one thing they forget," he added bitterly. "The age of
steam has sent the old-style sailors ashore and shipped these fellows in
their places. And that makes all the difference. These chaps didn't grow
up on ships and get used to being kicked and cowed and shot for mutiny
if they struck. No, they're all grown up on land, in factories where
they've been in strikes, and they bring their factory views along into
these floating factories. And they don't like these stinking holes! They
don't like their jobs, with no day and no night, only steel walls and
electric light! You hear a shout at midnight and you jump down into the
stokehole and work like hell till four a. m., when you crawl up all
soaked in sweat and fall asleep till the next shout. And you do this,
not as the sailor did for a captain he knew and called 'the old man,'
but for a corporation so big it has rules and regulations for you like
what they have in the navy. You're nothing but a number. Look here."

He took me to a bulletin that had just been put up on the wall. Around
it men were eagerly crowding.

"Here's where you find by your number what shift you're to work in," he
said, "and what other number you have to replace if he goes down. Heart
failure is damn common here, and if your man gives out it means you
double up for the rest of the voyage. So you get his number and hunt for
him and size him up. You hope he'll last. I'll show you why."

He crawled down a short ladder and through low passageways dripping wet
and so came into the stokehole.

This was a long, narrow chamber with a row of glowing furnace doors. Wet
coal and coal-dust lay on the floor. At either end a small steel door
opened into bunkers that ran along the sides of the ship, deep down near
the bottom, contai