ut it often becomes apparent that good bricklayers
or blacksmiths have been spoiled in the process of
selection; whereas a little courage and frankness on the
part of the selection people would have saved many souls and
many reputations.

CHAPTER VI

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