Families on boats.- Grouping boats in fleets has greatly reduced the number of captains and consequently decreased the number of families living on boats. Formerly every boat had its captain, and most captains took their families with them; at present, however, there is one captain for the fleet, and usually only the captain's boat, and possibly the first consort, have families aboard. During 1920 the total number of boats operated on the New York canals was 798; but this number must be divided by six or seven to estimate, roughly, the number of fleets. Not all the boat families could be located and interviewed, but 71 were visited who had taken with them 179 children on canal boats in 1920. Of these children, 61 of whom were under 6 years of age, 92 were boys and 87 were girls.
All the boatmen were American born and all were able to read and write. Of their wives, 10 were foreign born, 7 being French Canadians. One of these Canadian women could not speak English, and one could not read or write any language. With the boat families on the New York canals, as on other canals, boating was a family occupation handed down from father to son. Among the fathers of the 71 families visited, 62 had begun their industrial life as boat workers assisting their fathers, most of them before they were 12 years of age. At the time of the study, 47 of the men owned their boats, 8 of them operating under charter to companies; 23 were operating for companies on a salary basis. The remaining father was below the rank of captain and he was the son of a captain, traveling with his_young wife and baby in his father's fleet.
Hours of boat work.- Where an independent owner had full control of the situation, as on stretches of lake and river, he ran his boat 24 hours a day, for speed in transit meant more trips, more freight carried, and greater returns. The length of the workday on the canal, however, that is in the artificial sections of the waterways between the locks, was ordinarily 10 or 12 hours. The superintendent of public works stated in his reports that agreements with chartered towboats restricted the working-day to 12 hours; this he regretted as it doubled the time required for a trip. In general boats were operated for as many hours and as nearly continuously as possible.