第44章 The Pilots'Monopoly(4)

Reluctantly the ten outsiders yielded,in view of these things,and made application.There was another new by-law,by this time,which required them to pay dues not only on all the wages they had received since the association was born,but also on what they would have received if they had continued at work up to the time of their application,instead of going off to pout in idleness.

It turned out to be a difficult matter to elect them,but it was accomplished at last.The most virulent sinner of this batch had stayed out and allowed 'dues'to accumulate against him so long that he had to send in six hundred and twenty-five dollars with his application.

The association had a good bank account now,and was very strong.

There was no longer an outsider.A by-law was added forbidding the reception of any more cubs or apprentices for five years;after which time a limited number would be taken,not by individuals,but by the association,upon these terms:the applicant must not be less than eighteen years old,and of respectable family and good character;he must pass an examination as to education,pay a thousand dollars in advance for the privilege of becoming an apprentice,and must remain under the commands of the association until a great part of the membership (more than half,I think)should be willing to sign his application for a pilot's license.

All previously-articled apprentices were now taken away from their masters and adopted by the association.The president and secretary detailed them for service on one boat or another,as they chose,and changed them from boat to boat according to certain rules.

If a pilot could show that he was in infirm health and needed assistance,one of the cubs would be ordered to go with him.

The widow and orphan list grew,but so did the association's financial resources.The association attended its own funerals in state,and paid for them.When occasion demanded,it sent members down the river upon searches for the bodies of brethren lost by steamboat accidents;a search of this kind sometimes cost a thousand dollars.

The association procured a charter and went into the insurance business,also.It not only insured the lives of its members,but took risks on steamboats.

The organization seemed indestructible.It was the tightest monopoly in the world.By the United States law,no man could become a pilot unless two duly licensed pilots signed his application;and now there was nobody outside of the association competent to sign.Consequently the making of pilots was at an end.

Every year some would die and others become incapacitated by age and infirmity;there would be no new ones to take their places.

In time,the association could put wages up to any figure it chose;and as long as it should be wise enough not to carry the thing too far and provoke the national government into amending the licensing system,steamboat owners would have to submit,since there would be no help for it.

The owners and captains were the only obstruction that lay between the association and absolute power;and at last this one was removed.

Incredible as it may seem,the owners and captains deliberately did it themselves.When the pilots'association announced,months beforehand,that on the first day of September,1861,wages would be advanced to five hundred dollars per month,the owners and captains instantly put freights up a few cents,and explained to the farmers along the river the necessity of it,by calling their attention to the burdensome rate of wages about to be established.

It was a rather slender argument,but the farmers did not seem to detect it.

It looked reasonable to them that to add five cents freight on a bushel of corn was justifiable under the circumstances,overlooking the fact that this advance on a cargo of forty thousand sacks was a good deal more than necessary to cover the new wages.

So,straightway the captains and owners got up an association of their own,and proposed to put captains'wages up to five hundred dollars,too,and move for another advance in freights.

It was a novel idea,but of course an effect which had been produced once could be produced again.The new association decreed (for this was before all the outsiders had been taken into the pilots'association)that if any captain employed a non-association pilot,he should be forced to discharge him,and also pay a fine of five hundred dollars.Several of these heavy fines were paid before the captains'organization grew strong enough to exercise full authority over its membership;but that all ceased,presently.The captains tried to get the pilots to decree that no member of their corporation should serve under a non-association captain;but this proposition was declined.

The pilots saw that they would be backed up by the captains and the underwriters anyhow,and so they wisely refrained from entering into entangling alliances.

As I have remarked,the pilots'association was now the compactest monopoly in the world,perhaps,and seemed simply indestructible.

And yet the days of its glory were numbered.First,the new railroad stretching up through Mississippi,Tennessee,and Kentucky,to Northern railway centers,began to divert the passenger travel from the steamers;next the war came and almost entirely annihilated the steamboating industry during several years,leaving most of the pilots idle,and the cost of living advancing all the time;then the treasurer of the St.Louis association put his hand into the till and walked off with every dollar of the ample fund;and finally,the railroads intruding everywhere,there was little for steamers to do,when the war was over,but carry freights;so straightway some genius from the Atlantic coast introduced the plan of towing a dozen steamer cargoes down to New Orleans at the tail of a vulgar little tug-boat;and behold,in the twinkling of an eye,as it were,the association and the noble science of piloting were things of the dead and pathetic past!