Mr. KEFFE. I think the cases that arise of the character you describe would be so small in number

Captain SWEET. That may be true; I do not know how many such cases we have, but it occurs to me within the past 2 or 3 years we have had some rather disastrous accidents with small outboard motorboats, and we have had considerable loss of life in those boats. I recall one case, I think some 2 years ago, in the State of Maine, where an outboard motorboat, because of overloading, occasioned the loss of the lives, I think, of 11 children. The man who was operating the boat knew nothing at all about the operation of the boat. Of course, that is a rather glaring case of what might happen. I think there was another one down somewhere in this vicinity last year, as I remember it, where a number of children lost their lives.

Mr. KEEFE. Then, if you expect to adopt such a system as that, your examination would have to be pretty stringent, it seems to me. Captain SWEET. I do not know.

The CHAIRMAN. Cannot you write an exception into that that will take care of those cases such as Mr. Keefe has referred to and I have referred to?

Captain SWEET. I think it can be done without any trouble.

The CHAIRMAN. Because, I think the trouble is you pass legislation applicable to carrying a lot of passengers and expect to apply it to situations such as Mr. Keefe has outlined.

Mr. KEEFE. Of course in Wisconsin you understand, Captain Sweet and Mr. Chairman, we have thousands of lakes. I live in a territory that just attracts thousands of people, and there are people who have lived there a long time or have lived there all their lives who make a business of taking people out fishing who come from Chicago and various other places, and in certain cases they are required, under the State law, to have a guide's license; there are licensed guides in the north woods who make it a business to go out and guide people; but in the ordinary little inland lakes and waters, if these people are all required to go and get licenses from some inspector, it causes revolt among them. I do not know; they will just go up in the air something terrible.

Captain SWEET. I judge, Mr. Congressmen, these people are not now complying with the law, because that has been the existing law since 1910.

Mr. KEEFE. If it is, there is nobody knows a thing about it, like a lot of other laws.

Captain SWEET. It does not apply, however, to small inland lakes; it applies only to navigable waters of the United States. That might be the reason.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, talking about "navigable waters" this article. Mr. Nelson has written me about was on the Ozark.

Captain SWEET. There is no question about Lake Ozark and some lakes that are navigable waters; a great many of them are not.

The CHAIRMAN. We could except those people on those lakes. I will tell you the enforcement of those laws is just creating almost revolution among the people in the country.

Captain SWEET. I might say, Mr. Chairman, under existing law it requires the same license or a similar license under the same conditions. I do not recall having seen a report of a violation in the

case of an outboard motorboat not having a licensed operator. I do not recall ever having seen such a report.

Mr. KEEFE. Well the reason, perhaps, for that on waters I am familiar with is there is not anybody enforcing it, except occasionally; when they have a regatta on Lake Winnebago once in a while; when they send a Coast Guard cutter up there to patrol the lake and the course; about once a year, and while they are up there, they make it their business for 2 or 3 days to go up and down the river and around the lakes and if they see some fellow with a little motorboat they stop him and if he does not have a whistle and the pilot rules, it is just too bad. They caught two or three hundred of them last summer, of which I was one myself, and they assessed $600 and $700 penalties, and many of them had to go to lawyers and everything else, and I handled many of these cases and they finally compromised for $5 or something of that kind, with the result I think there were hundreds of complaints about the situation. And I do not recall in years of there ever being any accident or any trouble of any kind or character, don't you see? Now during all the rest of the year, when it just happens that boat does not come in there, nobady was ever aware there was any such thing.

Mr. SIROVICH. You mean to say they fined you $600?

Mr. KEEFE. They certainly socked $620 on me.

The CHAIRMAN. That is one benefit that does come from this bill. This bill does give the Secretary of Commerce the right to remit or mitigate all of those penalties.

Mr. KEEFE. Well, all they did under the other law was they accepted a $5 offer of compromise, of course with a promise to behave in the future, and they carried the pilot rules and stowed them away in the fish box where nobody ever looks at or reads them. It is silly.

The CHAIRMAN. The great trouble under the existing law is that in some of those cases they are assessing penalties that the Secretary of Commerce cannot remit, however justified their remission may be, but he has to report them to the Department of Justice and the Department of Justice has to take it up and prosecute and finally win out and they will be assessed a $5 fine.

Mr. SIROVICH. What were those men charged with, Mr. Keefe? Mr. KEEFE. It is the funniest thing that ever occurred in my life. I had a boat which was properly numbered, with all of the equipment on board, and my son had gone down on a Saturday afternoon and he saw a new boat that he liked very much and made a trade for the new boat. Now, we had to get that boat up to where we live, and had to run it up there and the next morning, Sunday, he said, "Daddy, I want to take you out to show you this new boat I have." We had all of the equipment we need in the shed, and the whistle, the little nickel whistle, and the pilot rules, were all in the fish box, and nobody thought to put them in. We had a fire extinguisher on board and two cushions, but they had to send in for the number and it had not come down yet. And in going down the river, here comes along a great big Coast Guard boat and it blows its whistle and pretty near swamped as with the wash from this big boat and they come up and say "Heave to; we have to board your vessel." [Laughter.]

The CHAIRMAN. And almost sunk you when they boarded.

Mr. KEEFE. I said, "If you are going to board, you be pretty care ful that you don't tip us over when you come aboard." He came aboard and took out a book and looked the thing all over, and I said, "Good-bye; you are a nice fellow." By the way, I had enter. tained him at my house the summer before, but he was doing his duty. And, in 2 or 3 weeks, I got a notice of penalties running to $620 and there flocked into my office dozens and dozens and dozens of people who came in with assessment of penalties and having to go out and get affidavits and to make statements, this, that, and the other, to send down here, and it caused a regular revolution among the people.

Now there was no argument; I could not tell this fellow this was a brand new boat, that I had just got it and was just trying it out; no, nothing of that kind. "You are violating the rules and regulations," and all that sort of thing. Well I just felt like taking the boat and throwing it in the woodshed and forgetting it; that is a fact. [Laughter.]

The CHAIRMAN. Well, it is very similar to the situation with Mr. Barden's son who owned a boat and simply because he had a certificate of identification and it would be washed away, or if he put it on the side of the boat it would have been ruined by rain, and because he left it in his father's office, they had to pay a great big fine and all that sort of thing. It is those fool regulations that have to be changed.

Mr. KEEFE. Now we are talking about the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic waters and are legislating for that sort of thing; but, as a matter of fact, when you make that law it covers Lake Poygan, the Fox River, Lake Puckaway, and all of the other outlying places, and these people have been operating for 50 years without any trouble at all, and I know dozens and dozens of men who go out and take a party to go fishing and have been doing it successfully, and they never heard of lot of this stuff and care less about it, and no mufflers are needed for outboards, because we have ordinances and local laws that prohibit the operation of outboard motors within certain hours, don't you see.

The CHAIRMAN. That is the way they ought to do it.

Mr. KEEFE. And we have local laws regulating the licensing of guides who are doing that business in the north country. The State has taken care of that proposition. But when you are legislating to take care of these outlying waters, you are applying the law back to the little inland waters, which I do not think is very much of our business.

The CHAIRMAN. It is not right. the States ought to legislate.

Mr. KEEFE. I think those are local matters that ought to be taken care of, even though they are Federal waters and are navigable waters. That is the way I feel about it.

The CHAIRMAN. I quite agree with you.

Mr. PETERSON. We have the same problem in our State, with reference to inland navigation.

The CHAIRMAN. It is all around. I came up here Christmas and had a raft of papers that deep [indicating] of inspector's reports. The inspector had been down there and he got down just before election; I don't know [laughter], but he came in and I said "My

Lord, why do you people just delay coming in before election." It happened he was on his way down to Florida. And John McDuffie, who is now district judge down in Alabama, wrote me and told me— For Heaven's sake, let us try to get rid of some of the burdens and stop cluttering up the United States courts with every little bit of a violation.

I think if a little common sense, prudence, and judgment is exercised on the part of the inspectors, it won't be so bad, but they seem to be like Mrs. Pratt once said when she was in the House. She said she "checked her brains when she went through the door", and I think that applies sometimes to the inspectors. [Laughter.]

Mr. KEEFE. Pardon me, Mr. Chairman; I am in favor of laws providing for suitable regulations, but I think there is a very vast difference between these inland waters and the outlying waters, socalled, or the salt water, if I may call it such. I do not think these people in the little rivers and lakes should be subjected to all of the pains and penalties of licenses and everything else. It is getting too burdensome.

The CHAIRMAN. I will agree they are getting too burdensome, and my feeling was to relieve some of the burdens in there.

Now let us see what other burdens there are in this bill.

Captain SWEET. I think, Mr. Chairman, those three cover the only burdens, if you may call them that.

The CHAIRMAN. The first was

Captain SWEET. Ventilation of the bilges. I do not believe that is a burden, because it only applies to new vessels.

The CHAIRMAN. And that applies to boats to be constructed in the future, as I understand.

Captain SWEET. Either to be constructed, or altered from open boats to cabin boats.

The CHAIRMAN. There is no doubt about it, that is a very dangerous thing; the gases form down there and with just any light or a little ignition, an explosion follows, and there is no question about it being dangerous.

Number 2 is

Captain SWEET. The second is the flame or flare arrester on new engines.

The CHAIRMAN. That is a burden?

Captain SWEET. I think not.

Mr. KEEFE. How does the manufacturer feel about that; do the present marine motors have flame arresters?

Captain SWEET. The present marine motors, as far as I know, sir, are all equipped with flame arresters, as I stated awhile ago.

The CHAIRMAN. I think there are some manufacturers in the room here, are there not? Did not one of you gentlemen represent the manufacturers?

Mr. LODGE. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. They are being manufactured now, are they not? Mr. LODGE. Oh, very much so, yes, sir; there are quite a few of them of different types being manufactured now.

The CHAIRMAN. They are being put on practically all engines now? Mr. LODGE. As far as I know they are, except on outboard motors. Captain SWEET. The bill definitely excludes outboards from the requirement.

The CHAIRMAN. And the other is all right if we could work out an exception of some of these waters, and also on the matter of the examination.

Captain SWEET. In addition to this, section 14 of the bill prohibits the reckless operation of a motorboat, or of any boat. It provides a rather large penalty; it makes such operation a misdemeanor. The statutes of the United States, as far as I know, have never contained such a provision dealing with the operation of boats.

Mr. SIROVICH. What do you consider the reckless operation of motorboats?

Captain SWEET. I might give you an example of one, sir. It happened a few years ago. One of these small speed boats ran up a little shallow creek. The operator was alone in the boat. His engine was not operating to suit him; he left the wheel, faced aft, bent over and worked on his engine while the boat was running at about 26 miles an hour. While he was looking back and working on his engine, his boat sheered a little; he ran through a little sandy beach with about 2 feet of water on it, or a little more. The beach was used entirely by small children; I think the oldest on the beach was 5 years old. He missed one little fellow by about 2 inches; two others ran to get out of the way, and he saw them and stopped his engine. That I consider was reckless operation, but there was nothing we could do with the man except to charge him with operating on the wrong side of the channel; that was the only charge under our present laws.

The CHAIRMAN. Well you go further than that in this bill, because the recklessness or negligence must be in a reckless or negligent manner so as to endanger the life, limb, or property of any person.

Captain SWEET. That is correct. In other words, it takes just that type of situation and it is a rather serious charge, to my mind. We propose that in the case of such operation endangering life, the matter will be referred to the courts for judicial determination as to whether there is actual reckless operation and to what extent the person guilty of it should be punished, and whether he should serve a term of imprisonment if the case was very flagrant.

Mr. SIROVICH. With these motorboats, can you run at any speed you want, or are you limited as to the speed?

Captain SWEET. Except on certain dredged channels and under certain local regulations, there is no limit to the speed on the water. Mr. KEEFE. That provision of the law, Mr. Chairman, it seems to me, is a good provision of the law. It follows the language rather closely of laws providing against the reckless management and operation of automobiles.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. KEEFE. It does not go quite as far and it does not use quite the same language as is found in most State statutes covering reckless driving, but in each case the question of what constitutes negligence and recklessness is specifically a question of fact to be passed upon by the court and jury, dependent upon all of the circumstances in each case.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not think there is any objection to that. Mr. KEEFE. I think this is a good law. I recall a situation that occurred last summer of a fellow operating a very fine Chris Craft