cargo. They cannot get the amount of pocketmoney they would like to have. They have no right to touch a cent of it, although they may have from £5 to £40 due to them in wages earned. They signed articles to the effect that they would receive their wages when they got home, and unless the captain and owners choose of their own goodwill to allow them a little pocket-money, they cannot legally have any.

The great majority of ships in San Francisco give the men 1 dollar a week in pocket-money, barely the pay of a little message-boy in the streets. A very few ships give 2 dollars to 4 dollars a week, and there are a certain number which give the men not a cent of pocket-money, however long they may have been at sea. When no pocket-money is given, it is a sign that the interesting method of procedure entitled‘running men out of the ship' has commenced.

The ship may be alongside the wharf discharging or loading from a week to three months, and there are seven evenings to be put in somewhere each week after work is done, by 5 or 6 p.m. What are men and boys to do for these seven evenings? The majority of them are not acquainted with

anyone in the city; some few, proportionately speaking, have friends, but for the great majority there is no house or home with which they are acquainted. It is not to be expected that they are going to stay on board the ship all the evening, which has very likely everything inside and out filthy with coaldust; and whether coal-dust or loose cement is flying about, ships' fo'c's'les and halfdecks, along the wharves, are not precisely the places that seamen would choose to spend an enjoyable evening after a hard day's work.

How far does 1 dollar a week go towards rendering their week-evenings pleasant and attractive? A visit to a good theatre on Saturday and a meal on shore, a trip to the Golden Gate Park on Sunday and a meal, some tobacco, and a few odd glasses of beer, and the week's pocket-money is gone in two days. Little wonder that sailors go to cheap places of so-called amusement; they have not the means to go elsewhere.

Not infrequently, if two or three men out of a whole crew get drunk, the slender 1 dollar a week is stopped, not only to those who were intoxicated, but to all hands. Why should a whole crew be punished when only two or three of them are guilty? It is right,

indeed, to punish those who abused the dollar, and perhaps created a little disturbance; but to punish the whole crew is simply an act of injustice.

So long as men have not a fair amount of their wages given them in port, so long will they try to borrow money when they can, or pawn their clothes. Who can wonder at it? Can they be blamed? Not much. For many a long week and month they have been on the dreary ocean, and now when for a few weeks there is the chance of some change and recreation, they mean to avail themselves of it, and if they cannot get money to do so from their own wages, they are going to borrow it where they can. It is at this juncture they find the tailor ready to advance money at a large percentage, and reckless of what they give for it, so long as they get the money in cash, they go and board the tailor,' and thus get a few dollars with which to enjoy themselves.

This is the sole reason why a number of men, if they had the power to choose, would go to the tailor who charged exorbitant prices for clothes, not because they wished to be robbed, but simply because they knew they could borrow cash from him, which, moreover,

they know full well is not to be got from an honest tailor.

Were seamen allowed to use a fair proportion of their wages in a foreign port, and at the same time given the option of refusing to go to any tailor who might be selected for them, until an honest man, fair and fair and square in all his dealings, was chosen, the crews of ships would scorn to go to some of the present men to whom they are sent. They would not, moreover, be nearly so accessible to the bribes of boarding masters and crimps, a subject which will be dealt with later.

No more irritating trial can be given to long-voyage seamen, and none with a worse. effect on the character and temper of the men, than the present penurious way of dealing out pocket-money, often as if they had no right to it, and that it was a very great privilege being allowed to have any at all.

It is contended that if these long-voyage men were allowed more pocket-money in port, both drunkenness and desertion would greatly increase. Seamen are regarded by many who are over them as a contentious and profligate class, who no sooner get money than they either get drunk, or put it to some equally bad use. Their only wish, it is

maintained, at the end of the voyage, is to have a big spree with the money they have earned. They cannot be trusted with money, and they are better without it. Thus some of the sailor's friends' at home argue, apparently wishing the innocent listener to believe they really are thinking and acting for the sailor's best interests, instead of, in reality, their own pockets.

Regarding the question of drunkenness amongst seamen, surely in a city like San Francisco, with its great temptations, especially for strangers, and manifold saloons, with several hundreds of the largest sailing-ships in the world coming there annually, there is an opportunity of finding out what is the real character of the sailor-which is almost second to none in the world.

That merchant seamen - and especially British seamen-if they are fairly treated, are the set of drunken profligates they are often supposed to be, is a very incorrect and misleading view to take. Of course, it serves the purpose of shipping-masters, boardingmasters, tailors, and others also, to keep shipowners, etc., under the impression that seamen are a set of drunken blackguards. The only way to deal with them, it is often