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So he performed the real economic function of having a gang there to make fast the ship and unload.

The men along shore who wanted the job very easily got the habit, without its being a shake-down or being anything corrupt, of making a little gift to the man in charge, saying, “I'd like to work whenever you get a ship of your line coming in. Here's a present for your wife,” and so on. It grandually came to be a set fee, the exact amount of which has never been fixed. Even as late as fifteen or twenty years ago, when I was handling longshoremen's cases, when there was an injury among other things that would come up in compensation cases would be, “What did he have to pay for the job?” That should be deducted from his wages. If you were estimating two-thirds of his weekly wages as a proper award for compensation, you had to deduct what he paid. The practice came right out there in the courts, when trying to decide what was a fair amount to deduct. Everybody agreed that a certain amount was a fair amount to deduct for the cost of getting the job. If he had paid the stevedore his fee, had only worked three hours, and then was injured, the idea was that his wage adjustment should take into account what it had cost him to get the job. It was no more than you would pay to an employment office -