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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 4/5/2016, SPi

Insiders versus Outsiders

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 4/5/2016, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 4/5/2016, SPi

Insiders versus Outsiders

Interest Group Politics
in Multilevel Europe

Andreas Dür and Gemma Mateo

1
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 4/5/2016, SPi

3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Andreas Dür and Gemma Mateo 2016
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2016
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 4/5/2016, SPi

Acknowledgements

This book is the result of work that we started in 2008, when we were at
University College Dublin. Back then, in the framework of a project funded
by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS,
Government of Ireland Research Project Grant), we decided to carry out a
survey of Irish interest groups. The success of this initial survey, which we
put into effect in 2009, made us decide to replicate our research in four more
countries. After our move to the University of Salzburg, we were fortunate
to receive funding for this research from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF,
Lise Meitner programme, grant number M1217-G16). Later, grants from the
Jubiläumsfonds of the Austrian National Bank (grant number 15513) and the
Salzburg Centre of European Union Studies (small project grant programme)
allowed us to add surveys of interest groups active on specific campaigns at
both the national and the European levels.
Without the willingness of a large number of interest group officials to take
time out of their busy schedules and respond to our surveys, this research
would not have been possible. Because we guaranteed them anonymity, we
cannot list them by name, but we very much appreciate their generosity.
Moreover, we are very grateful to Ilze Ruse for assisting us in carrying out the
survey in Latvia. Throughout this time, we were also lucky to be able to rely
on many excellent research assistants: Johanna Bötscher, Robert Huber, Justin
Leinaweaver, Gerald Lindner, Stephen Massey, Niall Morris, Ingo Nordmann,
Maximilian Rech, Jan Sand, Niklas Stappenbeck, Zdenek Staszek, and Markus
Vogtenhuber. Without their help, realizing the extensive empirical research
contained in this book would have been impossible.
Over the course of this research, we received many helpful comments and
suggestions from a large number of friends and colleagues. We owe much
gratitude to Dirk De Bièvre who commented on both the book proposal and
several parts of the book. Leonardo Baccini, Laura Baroni, Patrick Bernhagen,
Jan Beyers, Caelesta Braun, David Coen, Niamh Hardiman, Heike Klüver,
Andrea Liese, David Marshall, Sven-Oliver Proksch, Anne Rasmussen, Bernd
Schlipphak, Michaël Tatham, and Hannes Winner provided helpful feedback
on different parts of this book. Moreover, comments from audiences at
the Annual Conference of the European Political Science Association, the

v
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Acknowledgements

General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research, IMT

Lucca, Oxford University, University College Dublin, and the University of
Salzburg helped us refine our ideas.
Some portions of this book build on research that we previously published
as journal articles. Parts of Chapter 5 appeared in the European Journal of Polit-
ical Research (2013, Vol. 52, No. 5). Chapter 7 is a fully revised and expanded
version of an article that was published in European Union Politics (2014,
Vol. 15, No. 4). The case study on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
contained in Chapter 9, finally, draws on an article that was printed in the
Journal of European Public Policy (Vol. 21, No. 8). We are grateful to Blackwell,
Sage, and Taylor & Francis for the permission to reuse these materials.
Finally, the team at Oxford University Press was very helpful in improving
the manuscript and bringing it into print. Particular thanks are due to three
anonymous reviewers for Oxford University Press who offered excellent com-
ments and thorough feedback on an earlier version of this book.
We dedicate this book to our two children, Alexander and Julia, who quite
literally grew up while we were working on this project. They are the best
children we could hope for.

vi
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Contents

List of Figures ix
List of Tables xiii

1. Introduction 1

2. Lobbying Insiders and Lobbying Outsiders 16

3. Studying Lobbying in Multilevel Europe 38

4. A Map of Interest Group Activity in Europe 47

5. Strategies I: Gaining Access or Going Public 70

6. Strategies II: Insiders and Outsiders in Three Campaigns 97

7. Europeanization: Business Associations as Multilevel Players 124

8. Access: Bias in the Heavenly Choir 150

9. Influence: Lobbying, Public Salience, and Outcomes 182

10. Conclusion 208

Annex A: Questionnaire for the Actor-Centred Survey 225

Annex B: Questionnaire for the Policy-Centred Survey 233
Notes 237
Bibliography 247
Index 265

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List of Figures

3.1 Composition of country samples by group type 41

3.2 Response rates by country and group type 42
4.1 Cumulative proportion of groups created over time 48
4.2 Number of staff by group type and country 50
4.3 Time spent by interest groups on interest representation and
other activities 55
4.4 The importance of fifteen policy fields for interest groups 57
4.5 The number of policy areas that are important or very important
for a group 57
4.6 Correlating the importance of different policy areas 58
4.7 What the representation of interests entails 59
4.8 Share of lobbying on national and EU legislation 61
4.9 Frequency of contacts with a series of national institutions on
EU legislation 62
4.10 Frequency of contacts with a series of EU institutions 63
4.11 The use of lobbying tactics with respect to both national and
EU legislation 65
4.12 The number of tactics used by interest groups 66
4.13 Correlating tactics on both national and EU legislation 68
5.1 Explaining variation in the use of tactics on national legislation 76
5.2 Explaining variation in the use of tactics on EU legislation 77
5.3 Factor loadings 79
5.4 Choice of strategy by type of group 82
5.5 Resources, type of group, and choice of strategy 82
5.6 Strategy and policy field (national legislation) 83
5.7 Strategy and policy field (EU legislation) 84
5.8 Explaining variation in Relative inside (national) 85
5.9 The effect of group type for different levels of resources
(national legislation) 87

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List of Figures

5.10 The effect of group type in distributive and regulatory policy fields
(national legislation) 88
5.11 Explaining variation in Relative inside (EU) 89
5.12 The effect of group type for different levels of resources (EU legislation) 90
5.13 The perceived usefulness of tactics 93
5.14 Explaining variation in the perceived usefulness of tactics 94
6.1 Tactics on three cases (pooled across cases) 102
6.2 Tactics in general 103
6.3 Percentage of actors using a tactic at least once (tactics on three cases) 104
6.4 Percentage of actors using a tactic at least once (tactics in general) 105
6.5 Correlating tactics on cases and tactics in general 106
6.6 Percentage of actors using a tactic at least once (by group type
and campaign) 106
6.7 Tactics in general, by group type 108
6.8 Factor loadings (policy-centred survey) 109
6.9 Status quo defenders and status quo challengers by case 111
6.10 Positions by case and group type 112
6.11 Explaining variation in tactics on three cases 114
6.12 Explaining variation in tactics in general 117
6.13 Explaining variation in strategy choice on cases 118
6.14 Comparing strategy on cases with strategy in general 120
6.15 SQ challengers, SQ defenders, and strategy choice 121
6.16 Explaining variation in Relative inside (cases) 122
7.1 Distribution of dependent variables 132
7.2 Group type and Europeanization 134
7.3 Policy area and Europeanization 135
7.4 Explaining variation in EU lobbying 136
7.5 Interaction effect in EU lobbying (time) 138
7.6 Explaining variation in EU level 139
7.7 Interaction effect in EU level 140
7.8 Two-part models 141
7.9 Other measures of Europeanization 144
7.10 Regression results for other measures of Europeanization 145
7.11 Ordinal regression for Europeanization index 147
8.1 Contacts with a series of national and European institutions on
EU legislation 158

x
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List of Figures

8.2 Group type and frequency of contacts with executive institutions 161
8.3 Group type and frequency of contacts with legislative institutions 162
8.4 Staff and mean frequency of contacts 163
8.5 Explaining variation in access to national institutions 165
8.6 Multivariate regression results (interaction effects, national
institutions) 167
8.7 Interaction effect between Business and Staff (national institutions) 168
8.8 Explaining variation in access to EU institutions 169
8.9 Multivariate regression results (interaction effects, EU institutions) 171
8.10 Interaction effect between Business and Staff (EU institutions) 172
8.11 Results by policy area (executive institutions) 174
8.12 Results by policy area (legislative institutions) 175
8.13 Number of citizen groups by type 175
8.14 Explaining frequency of contacts by type of citizen group 176
8.15 Perceived difficulty of access 178
8.16 Explaining perceived difficulty of access 179
9.1 Tactics used by the two sides in the three campaigns 195
9.2 Internet search volume for the three cases in three countries 197
9.3 Number of newspaper articles on the three topics 199
9.4 Importance attributed to the three campaigns by supporters and
opponents of the policies 203

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List of Tables

1.1 Lobbying insiders and lobbying outsiders 5

3.1 Number of groups by type and country (actor-centred survey) 41
3.2 Number of groups by case and country (policy-centred survey) 44
3.3 Percentage of groups by group type and case 45
3.4 Number of interviews by case and country 45
4.1 Membership size by member and group type (actor-centred survey) 53
5.1 Univariate summary statistics (Chapter 5) 81
6.1 Univariate summary statistics (Chapter 6) 113
7.1 Univariate summary statistics (Chapter 7, only variables not previously
introduced) 133
8.1 Univariate summary statistics (Chapter 8, only variables not previously
introduced) 160
10.1 Summary of the findings: strategy choice 209
10.2 Summary of the findings: Europeanization 210
10.3 Summary of the findings: access 210
10.4 Summary of the findings: influence 210

xiii
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 4/5/2016, SPi

Introduction

Lobbying is ubiquitous in contemporary Europe. At various levels of

government, a wide variety of interest groups aim to shape political decisions.
On the issue of climate change, for example, thousands of groups lobby
national and subnational governments and the European-level institutions.
Environmental non-governmental organizations such as Greenpeace cam-
paign for stricter limits on carbon emissions. Lobby groups defending energy-
intensive industries, such as the European Chemical Industry Council, call
for subsidies that offset the costs created by the European Union’s (EU)
climate policy. Labour unions in the transport sector demand an expansion
of public transportation to reduce carbon emissions. Professional associations
such as the Standing Committee of European Doctors, finally, highlight the
dangers of climate change for countries’ health systems.
Marked differences exist in the lobbying behaviour of these actors. Some
interest groups mainly have direct contacts with decision-makers, partici-
pate in hearings, and contribute to public consultations. Other groups focus
on tactics that aim at mobilizing or shaping public opinion, such as press
releases, demonstrations, and internet campaigns. Moreover, interest groups
in Europe strongly differ in the targets of their lobbying activities. Some of
them are genuine ‘multilevel players’, that is, they lobby on both EU and
national political decisions and at both the national and the European levels.
Others, by contrast, are much more focused on national politics.
What explains these differences across interest groups—defined as orga-
nizations that have members or that rely on supporters for survival, try to
influence public policies, but do not run in elections (Jordan et al. 2004)1 —
in their lobbying behaviour? And what consequences do these differences
have for the access that groups gain to decision-makers and the influence
that they can exert on political decisions? Responding to these questions is
not only essential for a better understanding of lobbying in contemporary
Europe. Doing so is also a necessary step in a normative appraisal of the role
that interest groups play in democratic societies. Lobbying can be viewed as

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Insiders versus Outsiders

interference with democracy that leads to the promotion of some interests to

the detriment of others. At the same time, lobbying may enhance democratic
processes by giving voice to many different interests and enhancing the
quality of political decisions. By explaining interest group strategies, access,
and influence in multilevel Europe, this volume helps move forward this
normative debate.

The Argument in a Nutshell

Our key claim is that a single theoretical framework that focuses on the
distinction between different types of interest groups and groups’ endow-
ment with material resources can shed much light on the whole lobbying
process from strategy choice, through access to influence. According to this
argument, group type—namely the distinction between business associa-
tions, citizen groups, professional associations, and labour unions—is key
in explaining which strategies groups choose, how much access they gain to
which decision-makers, and under which circumstances they are most likely
to exert influence over policy outcomes. Business associations are groups that
have either firms or associations of firms as members. This includes both
broad business associations, such as chambers of commerce, and sectoral
groups. Citizen groups (also known as public interest groups) have a poten-
tially broad membership and defend interests that are not directly related to
the professions or vocations of their members or supporters (Berry 1999: 2).
In most cases, the members or supporters of citizen groups thus do not
have a direct and concentrated material stake in the policies advocated by
the association. Among others, the category of citizen groups encompasses
groups concerned with animal welfare, consumer and environmental protec-
tion, and international development. Professional associations champion the
interests of a specific profession, such as lawyers, medics, or artists. They tend
to have individuals or associations of individuals as members. Labour unions
represent the interests of employees, both in negotiations with employers
and vis-à-vis political decision-makers.
We expect major differences in lobbying behaviour across these types of
groups because of two factors. First, for a variety of reasons, collective action
problems are less severe for business associations than for non-business
groups, and here especially citizen groups (Olson 1965; Offe and Wiesenthal
1980; Walker 1983; Dunleavy 1991; Dür and De Bièvre 2007). The difference
in ease of collective action means that for the former, the pursuit of influ-
ence and the pursuit of survival tend to go hand-in-hand, whereas for the
latter often a trade-off exists between survival and the effective exercise of
influence. Professional associations and labour unions are located in between

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Introduction

the two other types of groups with respect to the severity of collective action
problems. Second, the different types of groups vary in the resources that they
can provide with a comparative advantage. Business associations tend to be
relatively better equipped with technical information, namely information
about the consequences of policy choices. They also tend to have a compar-
ative advantage in terms of ability to facilitate or hinder the implementation
of public policies. Citizen groups, by contrast, have a comparative advantage
in terms of political information such as information about constituency
preferences, representativeness, and legitimacy. Professional associations and
labour unions again adopt a middle position between these two types.
From these considerations, we derive the expectation that in multilevel
Europe, business interests focus more on inside lobbying than non-business
interests, meaning that they try to establish direct contacts with decision-
makers. They are also more likely to lobby on both national and EU
legislation and at both the national and the EU level. Moreover, they enjoy
better access to executive institutions and have a particularly large advan-
tage in shaping policy outcomes when mobilizing the public on an issue is
difficult. Citizen groups, in turn, find it more attractive to engage in outside
lobbying than business interests, meaning that they rely more strongly on
tactics that are aimed at mobilizing the public or changing public attitudes.2
They are less likely to engage in multilevel lobbying, find it easier to gain
access to legislative than to executive decision-makers, and have the greatest
impact on outcomes on issues that are amenable to an outside lobbying
campaign. Across most aspects of the lobbying process, professional associa-
tions and labour unions are more similar to citizen groups than to business
interests. Overall, we thus expect to observe two distinct logics of lobbying,
one pursued by business interests and the other by non-business interests.
The debate over the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partner-
ship (TTIP) offers a nice illustration of these differences in terms of lobbying
behaviour across group types. Most European business associations support
the negotiations that are aimed at liberalizing trade and investment flows
between the EU and the United States. They focus on writing position papers,
participating in hearings, and gaining direct access to decision-makers. From
the moment when negotiations started, they enjoyed excellent access to
executive decision-makers, in particular the European Commission (which
conducts these negotiations for the EU), and were able to shape the EU’s posi-
tion in these negotiations to a considerable extent. By contrast, the groups
that oppose the negotiations—mainly citizen groups and labour unions—
started a highly visible outside lobbying campaign, relying on demostrations,
press releases, petitions, street advertising, campaign websites, and social
media. They complain about a lack of access to the European Commission but
enjoy good access to the European Parliament. They only managed to leave

3
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Insiders versus Outsiders

their imprint on the EU’s negotiation position once their outside lobbying
campaign drew the public’s attention to the negotiations.
Group type alone, however, is not sufficient to explain variation across
interest groups in terms of strategy choice, access, and influence. Material
resources also play a role in that they augment the effect of group type. We
argue that the distinction between business associations and other types of
groups is largest for resource-rich groups. Business associations that are well
endowed with material resources are most likely to engage in inside lobby-
ing, to lobby on both EU and national legislation and at both the EU and
the national levels, and to enjoy good access to executive decision-makers.
By contrast, resource-poor business associations are more similar to citizen
groups, professional associations, and labour unions on all of these aspects
than to resource-rich business associations. Contrary to the expectation of
some studies that material resources reduce differences across group types in
terms of lobbying approach and impact (see e.g. Grant 2004; Binderkrantz
et al. 2015), we thus expect them to amplify these differences.
Moreover, our argument emphasizes the role of issue characteristics as a
moderator of the effect of group type. The distinction between distributive
issues (policies that offer concentrated gains to a few, while distributing
the costs among many, see Lowi 1964) and regulatory issues (which come
with concentrated gains for some and concentrated costs for others) affects
interest group strategies, as does a group’s position relative to the status quo;
and the degree to which an issue is amenable to outside lobbying matters
for interest group influence. Whereas the public salience of an issue does not
matter for interest group strategy, it does have an impact on the influence
that groups can exert on policy outcomes. The institutional setting in which
lobbying takes place also matters in a complex manner. Political institutions
affect both the amount of lobbying and, by determining which resources
groups can exchange for access, the access that groups gain to decision-
makers. By contrast, they only have a minor impact on the lobbying tactics
that groups use and which groups are able to shape policy outcomes. In short,
interest group characteristics are most important in understanding interest
group strategies, access, and influence. Issue characteristics mainly moderate
the effect of group type. The institutional setting, finally, primarily matters
because of its effect on the ease of lobbying, but without that changing the
basic patterns resulting from group characteristics.
Given the consistent differences between (resource-rich) business associa-
tions and non-business groups, we call the former ‘lobbying insiders’ and the
latter ‘lobbying outsiders’.3 The insiders mainly engage in inside lobbying;
are more likely to lobby on both national and European legislation and to
be politically active at both the national and the EU levels; enjoy privileged
access to executive institutions; and have an advantage in shaping political

4
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Introduction

Table 1.1 Lobbying insiders and lobbying outsiders

Lobbying insiders Lobbying outsiders

Prototype Resource-rich Citizen groups

business associations
Strategy Relative more inside Relative more outside
Focus Multilevel National
Access Executive Legislative
institutions institutions
Conditions for Issues not amenable Issues amenable
influence to outside lobbying to outside lobbying

decisions when an issue is not amenable to outside lobbying. The lobbying

outsiders, by contrast, focus on outside lobbying; are more strongly embed-
ded in the national context; have a comparative advantage in gaining access
to legislative institutions; and are successful when the public salience of an
issue is high or when they manage to raise the public salience of an issue.
Resource-rich business associations and citizen groups are the prototypes for
these two categories. Labour unions and professional associations are located
in between these two prototypes, but generally they are closer to the lobbying
outsiders than the lobbying insiders. Table 1.1 summarizes the resulting
expectation of two logics of lobbying for the case of multilevel Europe.

Studying Interest Groups in Multilevel Europe

The volume draws on a rich empirical basis to examine this argument. First,
we realized an online and mail survey of interest groups in five different
European countries (Austria, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, and Spain). We call
this the ‘actor-centred survey’ (for this term, see Beyers et al. 2014), because
we drew the samples of groups that we contacted from lists covering all
or nearly all groups that exist in the five countries, independently of the
groups’ level of activity. Our use of bottom-up samples is an advantage com-
pared to several earlier studies with respect to some aspects of our research.
Samples that start with groups that became active on an issue likely lead to
an overestimation of the level of activity of interest groups and the resources
that they possess. The country selection also has important methodological
advantages, as it brings together small and large countries and countries with
different systems of interest representation, namely both corporatist and
pluralist countries (where in the former, access to decision-makers is more
regulated and institutionalized than in the latter). It also nicely complements
existing surveys of interest groups in Europe that mainly focus on a few
North-Western European countries by covering a Southern (Spain) and an

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Insiders versus Outsiders

Eastern European (Latvia) country. We received 880 responses from business

associations, citizen groups, professional associations, and labour unions that
form the basis of our empirical analysis in three of the five analytic chapters
contained in this book.
Second, we carried out 258 interviews with interest groups in five dif-
ferent European countries (Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland,
and Spain) and at the EU level that were active on three major policy
issues debated in Europe over the last few years: the ratification of the Anti-
Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in Europe, the formulation of an EU
position in the post-Kyoto climate change negotiations, and the European
Fiscal Compact.4 We call this the ‘policy-centred survey’, because we started
with groups that we identified as being active on specific policies. ACTA
was supposed to strengthen the transnational enforcement of intellectual
property rights. The debate about the EU’s position in international climate
change negotiations is about the extent to which the EU should (promise to)
reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The European Fiscal Compact, finally,
is a treaty that obliges participating states that have the euro as currency to
have a national budget that is either balanced or in surplus.
We selected these cases because they differ in how amenable they are to an
outside lobbying campaign (we will discuss this more in detail in Chapter 9).
In the ACTA case, we envisage the greatest impact of outside lobbying; and
in the Fiscal Compact case, the smallest impact. Another advantage of this
case selection is that all three cases could be expected to attract lobbying
from many interest groups across Europe and at both the national and the
EU levels. This allows us to compare lobbying across countries and levels
of governance. The interviews offer us both systematic, quantitative data,
and qualitative, in-depth information about groups’ lobbying behaviour and
influence. What makes the resulting dataset particularly useful is that it
contains data on interest groups’ tactics both with respect to a specific issue
and in general. This allows for an analysis of the extent to which groups tailor
their tactics to the specific issues they are active on. Moreover, our data do
not only cover (a few of ) the most active players, but also many groups for
which the specific topic that we asked them about did not have particularly
high importance. This is important, as the salience of an issue for a group
may also impact on its behaviour. Datasets in which salience to the groups is
censored then may lead to wrong inferences about interest group behaviour.
Third, we use several other data sources to further bolster our empirical
analysis. Among them are the EU’s Transparency Register (a voluntary register
of interest groups that engage in lobbying at the EU level), which as of 2014
contained the names of close to 7000 interest groups,5 a list of all groups that
participated in EU consultations between 2008 and 2012 (with about 10,000
entries), a list of members of EU-level expert groups, and a list of national

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Introduction

groups with offices in Brussels. Finally, we draw on a large number of other

primary and secondary sources. For the ACTA case alone, for example, we
identified 306 position papers that we use as sources. We analyse this empir-
ical evidence using a combination of simple descriptive and more advanced
quantitative methods, and case study research, to provide a compelling case
in support of our argument.

The State of the Art

Our theoretical argument and the empirical analysis draw on and speak
to a large and rich literature on interest groups. This literature focuses on
three sets of explanatory variables. A first set concerns interest group char-
acteristics, such as interest group type, group resources, and groups’ level of
professionalization. These are the variables that also occupy centre stage in
our argument. A second set of factors captures different characteristics of the
issue on which the groups lobby. Issues can be of a distributive, regulatory,
or re-distributive type (Lowi 1964); they can be more or less complex; and
they can be more or less salient to the broader public. The third set of factors
encompasses characteristics of the political institutions in which lobbying
takes place. This concerns the system of interest representation, namely the
distinction between pluralism and corporatism; the extent to which political
institutions are dependent on the information provided by interest groups;
and the openness of political institutions to lobbying. A brief review of the
state of the art shows how these factors have been used to explain lobbying
strategies, access, and influence.
A well-developed literature analyses interest group strategies.6 Starting
with interest group characteristics, several studies find that group type mat-
ters for strategy choice (Schlozman and Tierney 1986; Gais and Walker 1991;
Kollman 1998; Binderkrantz 2005, 2008; Betzold 2013). The general conclu-
sion of this literature is that business interests or interests with concentrated
material gains or losses from a policy tend to rely more on inside lobbying
than ‘diffuse interests’. Some studies also find that while group type mat-
ters, overall the differences between groups of different types are relatively
minor (Beyers 2004; Binderkrantz 2005). They reckon that inside and outside
lobbying tactics are complements rather than substitutes. Groups that rely
much on inside lobbying can at the same time engage in much outside
lobbying.
Whereas many studies find that group characteristics matter for strategy
choice, so far there is little evidence that issue characteristics matter.
Mahoney (2008), for example, only finds limited influence of issue character-
istics such as issue scope and issue salience on strategy choice in the United

7
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Insiders versus Outsiders

States and the EU. For Baumgartner et al. (2009: 150), issue salience also
only plays a minor role in shaping interest group strategies. What matters,
according to them, is whether actors defend the status quo or pursue policy
change. In a study of environmental lobbying in the EU, however, Junk
(2015) finds that issue characteristics matter more than group characteristics.
She concludes that outside lobbying dominates on issues of high public
salience and low complexity.
Institutional factors, in turn, have been seen as playing a large role in
shaping interest group strategies (Beyers 2004; Kriesi et al. 2007; Naoi and
Krauss 2009; Woll 2012; Weiler and Brändli 2015). The openness of a political
system, for example, influences the extent to which groups rely on inside and
outside tactics (Kriesi et al. 2007). In open political systems, interest groups
face fewer incentives to go outside than in closed political systems. Moreover,
different political institutions demand different types of resources, creating
incentives for interest groups to focus on either inside or outside lobbying.
Groups that lobby the European Commission, for example, may benefit
less from outside lobbying than groups that approach the European Parlia-
ment (Beyers 2004). This might be so because members of the European
Parliament are directly elected, whereas public scrutiny of officials in the
European Commission tends to be low.
The question of which interest groups manage to gain access to which
decision-makers also has received much scholarly attention.7 Most studies
concerned with access put emphasis on group characteristics, in particular
the resources that groups possess (Bouwen 2002, 2004; Eising 2009; Kalla
and Broockman 2015). Access, the argument goes, is granted to groups that
can offer the resources that decision-makers demand. For the United States,
some evidence suggests that interest groups may be able to buy access to
decision-makers with the help of campaign contributions (Kalla and Broock-
man 2015). In the European context, more emphasis has been put on the
information that groups can exchange for access (Bouwen 2004; Eising 2009),
although material resources are also likely to play a role (Greer et al. 2008).
Moreover, the positioning of groups in or between coalitions may matter for
the access that groups gain (Beyers and Braun-Poppelaars 2014).
Whereas only little research has looked at variation in access by issue or
policy area (for an exception, see Rasmussen and Gross 2015), much work
focuses on the institutional determinants of access (Immergut 1992; Ehrlich
2007; Eising 2009; Naoi and Krauss 2009). What distinguishes pluralist from
corporatist systems of interest representation is that, in the latter, access to
decision-makers is regulated by political institutions. In a corporatist sys-
tem, access to decision-makers is institutionalized for both organizations
representing capital interests and organizations representing labour inter-
ests (Schmitter 1974). In multilevel Europe, however, the system of interest

8
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Introduction

representation may no longer matter much for interest groups’ access to EU

institutions (Eising 2009). Access has also been shown to depend on the
electoral system (Naoi and Krauss 2009) and the number of electoral districts
(Ehrlich 2007).
Finally, a large literature studies interest group influence, that is, the impact
of lobbying on policy outcomes.8 Again, interest group characteristics play
a key role in this research area. In fact, a key debate in this field concerns
whether business interests are more influential than other interests. On
the one hand, some authors find a ‘business bias’ in interest group poli-
tics. This may be a result of business interests’ superior ability to mobilize
(Schattschneider 1960; Gilens and Page 2014; Drutman 2015), their structural
power in capitalist societies (Domhoff 2013; Hindmoor and McGeechan
2013) and their superior endowment with resources (Dür and De Bièvre
2007). On the other hand, some authors conclude that business interests are
not more successful in getting their preferred policy outcomes than other
interests. This may be a result of conflict among different business interests
(Falkner 2007) or because business interests are opposed by other interest
groups that manage to sway decision-makers in democratic political systems
(Dür et al. 2015; Hojnacki et al. 2015). Resources, as another group charac-
teristic, may also matter for interest group influence. Some studies even find
a direct impact of financial contributions to politicians on policy outcomes
(Quinn and Shapiro 1991), but many more cast doubt on such a direct link
(Baumgartner and Leech 1998; Baumgartner et al. 2009; McKay 2012). The
information—of both a technical and a political nature—that groups possess
is likely to play a larger role (Hall and Deardorff 2006; Baumgartner et al.
2009). Such information can either persuade decision-makers or serve as a
‘subsidy’ to decision-makers who already take a position in line with the
demands voiced by the groups.
Influence is also likely to depend on issue characteristics (Heinz et al.
1993; Mahoney 2008; Baumgartner et al. 2009; Klüver 2011; Bunea 2013;
Bernhagen et al. 2015). In a seminal article, Lowi (1964) argued that busi-
ness’s ability to shape American trade policy was larger in the 1930s when
trade was a distributive issue than in the 1950s when trade had become
a regulatory issue. Much work also suggests that the public salience of an
issue matters for the extent to which specific interest groups can shape
policy outcomes (Culpepper 2011; Bernhagen 2013; Klüver 2013; M. K. Ras-
mussen 2015). Finally, political institutions may allow some interests to exert
more influence than other interests (Dür 2008a: 1215–17). The easy access
to decision-makers that is provided by the political system of the United
States, for example, may have lowered the influence of farm lobbies in that
country compared to the more closed political systems of France and Japan
(Sheingate 2001).

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Insiders versus Outsiders

Two conclusions emerge from this brief overview of studies on interest

groups and lobbying. On the one hand, most researchers focus on the same
sets of factors when explaining lobbying strategies, access, and influence.
Consistently, we found references to group characteristics, issue character-
istics, and the institutional setting. Nearly all arguments present in the lit-
erature, however, apply to only one of these three aspects of lobbying. This
focus of much research on only one aspect of lobbying, in turn, has made
it difficult to fuse the various strands of literature into a unified whole or
a few competing theories, despite the parallels that are present across these
three strands of literature. On the other hand, most arguments focus on the
direct effects of one or several variables on strategies, access, or influence.
Largely missing are arguments that theorize how different variables interact
in producing certain outcomes.

The Value Added

This volume directly addresses these two issues. Our key contribution to the
literature is to show that a single argument, building on group type as main
variable, can explain variation across groups in their choice of strategy, their
access to decision-makers, and the conditions under which they can exert
influence. Our argument suggests that lobbying insiders differ from lobbying
outsiders across all of the stages of the influence production process (for this
term, see Lowery and Gray 2004) and that these differences can be traced back
to collective action problems and groups’ resource endowment. The volume
thus brings research on interest groups one step closer to specifying the
‘linkages and potential feedbacks among the several stages of the influence
production process’, an aim formulated by Lowery and Gray (2004: 164) and
still not reached (Bunea and Baumgartner 2014). More generally, by showing
how collective action problems shape interest group behaviour, but without
making lobbying only a battle of ‘special interests’, the argument makes a key
contribution to the neopluralist research agenda in the interest group field
(Lowery and Gray 2004; McFarland 2007).
The resulting theoretical argument that we use to explain strategies,
access, and influence, moreover, goes beyond postulating direct relationships
among variables. Rather, we stress how different factors interact in produc-
ing the patterns of lobbying that we observe. Following our argument, the
effect of group type is conditional on factors such as the material resources
groups possess and issue characteristics. Group type thus matters differently
for resource-rich groups than for resource-poor groups; and when groups
lobby on distributive issues than when they lobby on regulatory issues.

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Introduction

Also political institutions moderate the effect of group type, for example in
that business associations have better access to executive institutions and
non-business groups to legislative institutions. We thus emphasize interac-
tions between variables, whereas much of the earlier literature solely looked
at the additive effects of different factors.
A further key contribution of this book is that we put together an unprece-
dented amount of empirical data to test our argument. As already described,
our data cover a large number of interest groups of different types, across
all policy areas and several countries and at the EU level, with respect to
strategies, access, and influence. Other quantitative studies of interest groups
in Europe are either limited in terms of type of interest groups studied
(for example, only business associations, as in Eising 2009, or only agricul-
tural associations as in Klüver 2010); policy area (for example, only health
policy as in Greer et al. 2008 or only external trade policy as in Beyers and
Kerremans 2012); or country coverage (for example, only Belgium as in Beyers
2002). Moreover, we not only collected data on what interest groups do ‘on
average’, but also how they behave when lobbying on specific cases. No
similar mapping exercise of the European interest group landscape has been
carried out before.9
Another value added of this book is that both our theoretical argument
and the empirical analysis capture lobbying at two levels of governance.
This allows us to show that not only can a single theoretical argument
shed light on strategy choice, access, and influence, but also that it can
do so largely independent of the institutional context. Much research has
been undertaken on interest groups at the EU level (see e.g. Coen and
Richardson 2009b); and a few studies have focused on what happens in
terms of interest group politics at the national level (for example, Heinisch
2000; Duvanova 2007; Reutter 2012; Beyers and Braun-Poppelaars 2014).
Studies such as ours that combine data on national activities with data on
EU-related activities and data on national groups with data on groups orga-
nized at the transnational level, by contrast, are rare. This makes our study
particularly well-suited to discuss similarities and differences in lobbying
behaviour between the two levels. Interestingly, we find relatively small dif-
ferences in terms of interest group strategies and access across levels. A group’s
relative focus on inside or outside lobbying tends to be stable across the two
levels of governance. Moreover, groups that enjoy good access to executive
(legislative) institutions at the national level also enjoy privileged access to
executive (legislative) institutions at the European level. Contrary to some
existing studies (Pollack 1997; Mazey 1998; Geddes 2000), our argument
about lobbying insiders and lobbying outsiders thus lets us conclude that
a shift of authority from the national to the supranational level is unlikely
to empower the weak.

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Insiders versus Outsiders

The resulting theoretical and empirical breadth of our book makes it partic-
ularly well-suited to contribute to a normative evaluation of interest groups’
role in democracies. Over the last two decades, many political systems have
given a greater role to ‘civil society’. In the EU, for example, the Lisbon
Treaty (which entered into force in 2009) created a legal obligation for Euro-
pean institutions to consult ‘representative associations and civil society’
(Article 11). The hope was that participation by civil society would act as
‘a remedy to the legitimacy crisis of the EU’ (Kohler-Koch 2010: 101). In
fact, the resulting greater participation by interest groups in policy-making
may enhance the legitimacy and quality of decisions by allowing for different
voices to be heard and expertise to be transmitted to decision-makers (Green-
wood 2007). The involvement of interest groups, however, may also have the
opposite effect, for example if some segments of civil society have privileged
access to decision-makers or if the information that decision-makers receive
from lobbyists is incomplete or even misleading.
Our argument suggests that better access to decision-makers for interest
groups is unlikely to be a panacea for the ails of contemporary democracies.
Both our study and other research show that in many cases, business interests
and citizen groups take opposite and quite unified positions in policy debates
(see e.g. Dür et al. 2015; Hojnacki et al. 2015; and also Chapter 9). For the
case of the United States, for example, Hojnacki et al. (2015) found that
only in about 10 per cent of all policy debates, do business interests face
off against other business interests. Much more frequent are cases in which
unified business faces a unified front of citizen groups. For the case of the EU,
Dür et al. (2015) also found that most legislative debates are shaped by such a
constellation of interests. In light of this evidence on the structure of conflict,
the existence of two distinct logics of lobbying means that institutional
reforms that enhance access will benefit some interests more than others.
Making access cheaper hence will not create a situation in which business
interests and other interests enjoy equal access to decision-makers. Rather,
business interests will find it even easier to gain access, whereas the incentives
for citizen groups to focus relatively more on outside lobbying are likely to
persist. Later, we argue that this may not be particularly problematic, but
decision-makers engaging in institutional reforms should still be aware of
this effect.

A Short Guide through This Book

In Chapter 2, we present the theoretical framework that forms the basis for
the more specific arguments developed in later chapters. It stresses variation
across group types in the severity of collective action problems and the

12
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Introduction

resources they possess relatively abundantly. The combination of collective

action problems and resource endowment means that, for non-business
groups, the pursuit of survival and political influence do not necessarily
go hand-in-hand. For them, but not for business associations, sometimes
the aim to achieve one of these two objectives goes to the detriment of
attempts at reaching the other. The expectation then is for different types
of interest groups to follow distinct logics of lobbying—an insider logic and
an outsider logic.
In Chapter 3, we briefly describe our methodological approach. We present
the actor-centred and the policy-centred survey that allow us to examine our
argument empirically. The chapter contains information, such as on response
rates, that is essential to assess the plausibility of the findings presented in
later chapters. Chapter 4 then provides a map of interest group activity in
multilevel Europe. We draw on data from both the actor-centred survey and
the policy-centred survey to discuss key characteristics of the interest groups
that lobby in the European multilevel system and to give a first descriptive
overview of lobbying behaviour. The descriptive analysis of our data also
allows us to offer initial empirical support for some assumptions underlying
our argument and for some steps in our causal reasoning.
In Chapter 5, we use the argument set out in Chapter 2 to explain vari-
ation in lobbying strategies across interest groups. Basically, groups can
directly contact decision-makers (inside lobbying) and/or try to influence
policy-making by shaping public opinion or mobilizing the public (outside
lobbying). We argue and empirically show that business associations are more
likely to engage in inside lobbying and citizen groups and labour unions are
more likely to go public, with professional associations taking an interme-
diary position. The effect of group type, however, is conditional on groups’
endowment with material resources and the issue context: the differences are
largest for resource-rich groups and groups lobbying on distributive issues.
At the same time, we find few differences in strategy choice across types of
legislation (national versus European), suggesting that interest group char-
acteristics have a greater influence on strategy choice than the institutional
context. These findings offer powerful support for the theoretical framework
developed in Chapter 2.
The arguments presented in Chapters 2 and 5 suggest that group type and
resource endowment predispose groups towards an inside or an outside strat-
egy. In Chapter 6, we not only offer a second test of this argument, but also
push it a step further. In particular, we expect that the differences between
business actors and citizen groups in terms of strategy choice are largest when
they defend the status quo. By contrast, when they challenge the status quo,
the strategies chosen by the two types of groups tend to converge. We also
argue that business groups are lobbying insiders independently of both the

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Insiders versus Outsiders

public salience of an issue and the relationship between their demands and
public attitudes on that issue. We find support for these expectations relying
on data from the policy-centred survey. Of particular interest is the result that
the distinction between lobbying insiders and lobbying outsiders is valid for
each of the three campaigns that we covered in that survey.
In multilevel Europe, interest groups not only face a choice between more
or less inside and outside lobbying. They also need to decide how much
of their lobbying they should focus on national politics and how much
on EU politics. Much variation exists across groups with respect to this
aspect of lobbying strategy, with some groups being more ‘Europeanized’—
that is, more focused on the EU—than others. We explain this variation in
Chapter 7. Again drawing on the theoretical framework developed in
Chapter 2, we argue that the distinction between lobbying insiders and
lobbying outsiders offers a response to this question. Concretely, we expect
lobbying insiders—namely resource-rich business associations—to be more
Europeanized than other groups. Using data from our actor-centred survey of
interest groups in five European countries, we find support for our argument.
Data on groups’ Brussels offices, participation in EU consultations, member-
ship in EU-level expert groups, registration in the EU’s Transparency Register,
and membership in EU federations also back our argument.
In Chapter 8, we look at variation in the extent to which interest groups
gain access to different political institutions. The theoretical framework pre-
sented in Chapter 2 allows us to develop a theoretical argument that suggests
that business associations and professional associations should enjoy privi-
leged access to executive institutions such as the European Commission and
national governments; and citizen groups and labour unions to parliaments.
Again, we expect the difference across group types to be conditional on
resource endowment: the business advantage in terms of access to executive
institutions should be largest for groups rich in material resources. Relying on
data from the actor-centred survey, we find support for these expectations,
even while controlling for differences across groups in strategy choice. Our
findings thus are supportive of a view that sees the EU’s system of interest
representation as a form of ‘elite pluralism’ (Coen 1997). They also suggest
that contrary to some studies (Pollack 1997; Mazey 1998), a shift of authority
from the national to the supranational level does not necessarily grant better
access to groups with few contacts with national decision-makers. In other
words, lobbying outsiders remain in that category across different levels of
governance.
In a final empirical chapter (Chapter 9), we assess how the differences in
lobbying behaviour and access to decision-makers stressed in the previous
chapters shape groups’ ability to influence political decisions in Europe’s
multilevel polity. We do so by looking at three major decision-making

14
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
a crack in the floe. “Ah, right here.” De Long scribbled his initials on
the note, drew an arrow pointing to the writer’s address, and
dropped it into the crack. “Now we’ll see how good the seagoing
Arctic mail service is. At that, it may get to New York before we do,”
added the captain grimly.
Before we moved off from this camp, the captain decided to check
the loads to make sure we were taking nothing more than was
absolutely necessary. The first thing he discovered was that flouting
his order about clothing, Collins had smuggled into our baggage and
was taking along an extra fur coat. Immediately, under the captain’s
angry eye, it went flying out on the ice. And the next thing he found
was that in their knapsacks (which were towed along stowed inside
the whaleboat) the seamen almost without exception were taking
some small mementoes of the cruise, trifling in weight in
themselves, in the aggregate under our circumstances, a
considerable burden. They went sliding out on the ice alongside
Collins’ coat.
And then having cleaned house, the captain waited for the rain to
end.
Since it rained all night, we stayed in camp, getting a rest if such it
can be called. Next night we were underway again on a new
schedule, the load of supplies on each sledge now cut in half (except
of course for the boat sledges) the idea being to lighten up our
overloaded sledges so we could move them to the designated point
more easily and with less danger of breaking runners, then unload
and send them back empty for the other half of their cargoes.
Working this way we started out, only to find half a mile along a
crack in the ice, not wide enough for a ferry, too wide to jump with
the sledges. Here the ice broke up with some of our sledges floating
off on an island, stopping all progress till we had lassoed some
smaller cakes for ferries and on these we rode over our remaining
loads, finishing our night’s work with hardly half a mile gained and
everyone knocked out again.
 So for the next four days we struggled along, sometimes making a
mile a day; once, by great good luck, a mile and a quarter. The
going got worse. Pools of water from the late rain gathered beneath
the crusts of snow and thin refrozen ice. As we came along, the
surfaces broke beneath us, leaving us to flounder to our knees
through slush and ice water. More sledge runners broke; Nindemann
and Sweetman were kept busy at all hours repairing them. Chipp got
worse, Alexey vomited at the slightest provocation, Lauterbach
looked ready to die, and Lee staggered along on his weakened legs
as if they were about to part company at his damaged hips.
Danenhower, of all those sick, while he could hardly see, at least had
some strength, and was added to the hospital sled to help pull it
under Chipp’s pilotage. Ahead Dunbar scouted and marked out our
road south by compass, then with a pick-ax endeavored to clear
interfering hummocks from that path, aided a little in that by
Newcomb. I bossed the sledge gangs and kept them moving, putting
my shoulders beneath a boat or a sledge when necessary to get it
started. Ambler when not tending his patients, armed with another
pick-ax helped Dunbar clear the chosen road. And bringing up the
rear was De Long, supervising the loading, checking food issues, and
relentlessly driving us all along.
On June 25, we had been underway eight days since starting
south. By such grueling labor over that pack as men cannot
ordinarily be driven to, even to save their own lives, and which in
this case only the overpowering will of De Long rendered possible,
we had made good to the southward by my most liberal calculation
a total distance over the ice of five and one-half miles. I
contemplated the result with a leaden heart. Even should the ice
extend southward only one hundred miles out of the five hundred
we had to cover (which seemed far too good to be true), at that rate
of advance it would take us one hundred and fifty days to cross to
open water. Long before that, unless we died of exhaustion first as
now looked very probable, our sixty days’ rations would have been
consumed and we should be left to perish of starvation midway of
the pack.
 In despair, I gazed at our three cumbersome boats, overhanging
at both ends their heavy sledges, the last of which after soul-
wrenching efforts my party had just dragged over rough hummocks
into camp. Around it the men, too exhausted even to go to their
tents, were leaning their weary bodies for a moment’s rest before
they undertook the labor of lifting again their aching and frozen feet.
Those massive boats, like millstones round our necks, were what
were killing our chances. With our food alone, divided into
reasonable sledge loads, we might make speed enough to escape,
but with those boats—! Incapable of division, the smallest over a ton
in weight, the largest over a ton and a half, dragging those boats
was like dragging huge anchors over the floes. If only we could
abandon them! But with a sigh, I gave up that dream. With an open
sea somewhere ahead, the boats were as necessary to us as the
pemmican. But only five and a half miles made good in our first
week when we were strongest! It looked hopeless. We could only
labor onward and pray for a miracle. I quit thinking and turned
toward my tent, my supper, and my sleeping bag.
On the way, I bumped into Mr. Dunbar, just returning from a
preliminary scouting trip over our next night’s route. Dunbar, hardly
fifty, hale and hearty, a fine example of a seasoned Yankee skipper
when first he joined us, now with his face wrinkled and worn, looked
like a wizened old man staggering under a burden of eighty years at
least, and ready to drop in his tracks at the slightest provocation.
“Well, captain,” I sang out jocularly to cheer him up a bit, “what’s
the good word from the front? Sighted that open water we’re looking
for yet?”
The whaler looked at me with dulled eyes, then to my
astonishment broke down and sobbed on my shoulder like a baby. I
put a fur-clad arm gently round his heaving waist to comfort him.
“What is it, old shipmate? Can’t you stand my jokes either?”
“Chief,” he sobbed, “ye know it ain’t that; I like everything about
ye. But that ice ahead of us! It’s terrifically wild and broken, and so
chock-full o’ holes, chief, I could hardly crawl across! We’ll never get
our sledges over it!” The weeping old seaman sagged down in my
arms, his gray head nestling in my beard.
“Don’t be so sure, mate,” I said with a cheeriness I didn’t feel. “My
lads are getting so expert heaving sledges over hummocks, I’m
thinking of putting ’em on as a flying trapeze act in Barnum’s Circus
when we get back, and making us all as rich as Commodore
Vanderbilt in one season! Come on, captain, forget it; let’s have a
cup of coffee to warm us up—no, let’s belay the coffee. Come to
think of it, I guess I still got drag enough with Dr. Ambler to work
him for a shot of whiskey apiece for a couple of good old salts like
us.” And I led him away to the hospital tent, where Ambler, after one
look at Dunbar, hardly needed the wink from me to produce without
a word his medical whiskey.
Leaving Dunbar with the doctor after swallowing a drink myself, I
started again for my own tent, but once more I was stopped, by the
captain this time, who beckoned me to join him in the snow
alongside the deserted whaleboat. All hands were in their tents by
now, working on their cold pemmican.
“What have you made our mileage to the south so far, chief?”
opened the skipper listlessly.
“Being generous, about five and a half miles, sir.” I looked at him
puzzled. The captain knew our progress, logged daily in his journal,
even better than I. Surely he wasn’t keeping me from my supper
just for that.
De Long nodded, continued,
“That’s right, over the ice of course. Melville, I’m sorry to say that
today I got some good sights of the sun for the first time since we
started. Chief,” and his voice broke as he looked at me, “the
northwest drift has got us! We’re twenty-five miles further north
tonight than the day we started!”
 CHAPTER XXVIII

Twenty-five miles further north than when we started! Coming on

top of all else, that was a knockout blow. With sagging knees, I
leaned against the gunwale of the whaleboat, looked at the haggard
captain, asked faintly,
“Sure?”
“Yes,” he replied mournfully, “sure. Two meridian altitudes of the
sun and a couple of Sumner lines and they all check. I couldn’t
believe the first sight myself; I thought my sextant was bad. But
after checking that with nothing wrong, I spent all day getting check
sights; you saw me shooting some of them. No question about it
now. But, for God’s sake, don’t tell anyone! Not even another officer.
If the men knew, I couldn’t get ’em to lay a hand on another sledge.
They’d just sit down here and wait to die!”
I nodded at that. Who could blame them? Caught on a treadmill,
why should they torture themselves with such labor as slaves would
lie down under and suffer themselves to be lashed to death rather
than rise and endure, when the only result was that they were being
carried backward five times as fast as their puny efforts pushed
them forward? If the men learned the results of those disastrous
sights, we were finished! But weren’t we finished anyway, whether
they knew it or not?
“That’s bad, captain,” I mumbled, my brain numbed at the news.
“What can we do now?”
“I haven’t figured it out fully yet, chief; I want your advice on
what I have in mind. That’s the only reason I told you; that, and
maybe the thought that at least one other officer ought to know
where we are and where we’re going in case something happens to
me. Since Chipp and Danenhower, both my deck officers, are
knocked out, you’re the only officer left I can talk to. But this
mustn’t get out! It’d kill Chipp, who’s in a bad way anyhow, like
hitting him with an ax. And what it’d do to the men, you can guess!”
He finished with a ghastly smile.
Vaguely I felt that that might be a mercy to Chipp; indeed it might
well be a mercy to all of us should a kindly Providence then and
there somehow brain us all with an ax and end our sufferings. But of
that I said nothing. The captain had hinted at something further to
be done. What, I wondered, was it? Abandon the boats, speed up
our progress, trusting to luck the ice held out under us till we got to
the New Siberian Islands, there to live (or starve rather) on moss
and Arctic willow till perhaps some year a chance party of ivory
hunters landed and rescued us? A thin chance, that! I looked
curiously at De Long.
“Well, skipper, no thanks for telling me. I could’ve got more work
out of my gang if I were still in blissful ignorance like the others than
I can now, but I’ll keep on doing my best. And if my advice is any
good, you’re welcome to it. What’s your idea?”
“I know that well enough, chief. I would gladly have suffered
under that knowledge alone, but the safety of the whole party
requires someone else to know, and unfortunately to suffer with me.
But no use talking about that now. Let’s get along with what’s next.”
He jerked out from beneath his parka a chart, unfolded it, spread it
on the midship thwart of the whaleboat. On it, marked by a bold
cross enclosed in a red ink circle, was a spot in latitude 77° 18′ N.
where the Jeannette had sunk, a spot unfortunately for us now, far
to the southeast of the small penciled cross in latitude 77° 43′ N.
which marked our present position as shown by the captain’s latest
sights.
“There’s just one possible thing we can do, Melville; change the
course from due south as we’re heading now, to southwest. The ice
is drifting clearly enough northwest. It’s like crossing a river current;
no use bucking into it as we’re doing now going south, even if land
is closest that way. The only hope is to cut across perpendicular to
the current and ultimately you get to the other bank, even though
the current carries you downstream meanwhile. The same with us,
we’ve got to cut directly across the drift, that is, southwest; and
some day, regardless of how far north we’re carried, we’ll come to
the edge of this pack and can launch our boats—provided we live
long enough! And to insure that, we’re going to go on shorter
rations now to stretch out our food,” he concluded significantly. “I’ve
decided all that already, Melville. All I want to know from you—
you’re working the men—is how thin I can cut it and still let you
keep on driving them, harder even than now!”
I thought a moment. Our daily rations, pemmican, hard bread,
and coffee, were none too generous in quantity as it was for the
terrific physical effort the men were laboring under. But who knows
what men can stand? I was learning all the time.
“Well, skipper, cut a third off. That’ll stretch it out for ninety days
instead of sixty. I doubt that we can keep up long on such short
rations, but maybe we can knock over a few seals to help out now
and then. Anyhow, I’m willing to try.
“Good!” agreed De Long. “Nil desperandum! I knew I could count
fully on you, chief; I always can. We’ll start that program, new
course and all, tonight.” He started to fold up the chart again, when
his eye fell on the penciled cross marking our position. “77° 43′
North,” he muttered. “Farthest North for us yet. And forever too, on
this cruise anyway, I hope. Say, Melville, you remember that silk
banner you used in claiming Henrietta Island? Well, it’s in the first
cutter, alongside the whaleboat here. There’s something else about
that flag my wife made for me. She wanted me to fly it in
celebration when we made our ‘Farthest North.’ Let’s hope we’re
celebrating that glad event right here and now. But the crew knows
about that too, I think. If I fly that flag over this camp, they’ll smell
a rat right off.” He looked furtively round. All our men were
apparently still in the tents. No one was in sight. “I think I can take
a chance to please Mrs. De Long on this; it’s little enough I’ve done
for her since she married a sailor. Here, Melville, lend a hand.”
 Together we drew from its case and unwrapped that silken banner,
a moderately large American ensign beautifully embroidered round
the edges by Emma De Long’s loving hands for her husband’s ship.
And stealthily, keeping it below the gunwales of the first cutter lest
someone looking from a tent should see and wonder, we fully
extended it horizontally. Then standing on the ice alongside that
open boat, with De Long to starboard and me to port, we two,
looking certain death on the pack in the face, waved that banner
beneath the Arctic sky in latitude 77° 43′ from the Equator—Farthest
North for George Washington De Long, if not for the Jeannette!
And then, leaning over the gunwale, De Long buried his weather-
beaten face in the rustling silk folds of his wife’s flag, kissing it
fervently, while I, clinging to the other side, closed my wet eyes in
silence. Well did I remember that June day in 1879, almost exactly
two years before in San Francisco, when at our commissioning
Emma De Long, a lovely figure, had herself proudly manned the
halliards and hoisted that banner to the masthead on the Jeannette!
But the Jeannette was gone beneath the floes, and far away at that
moment, I envisioned Emma De Long, a different woman now, worn
by two years of hourly dread over news that never came, praying for
the safety of the man before me, who with heaving shoulders was
caressing his country’s flag, the solitary symbol of his wife’s love still
left in his possession.
De Long straightened up.
“All right, Melville. I think my wife’ll be glad to know when it gets
back we flew her flag at our Farthest North. Come on, let’s fold it up;
carefully now, so nobody’ll know we had it out and perhaps guess
why.”
Silently I obeyed. We rolled up the flag, slid it into its oilskin case,
carefully restowed the case as before. The chances of our ever
getting back were slight now, but as I shoved that case under the
thwarts in the cutter, bachelor as I was, I hoped that even though
our own bodies might soon be stretched in death over that desolate
ice pack, somehow that flag in the boat might survive the drift, some
day to be picked up and returned to the one person who would
sense among its silken folds the message that it bore.
 CHAPTER XXIX

When we got underway that night on June 25th, we headed

southwest instead of south. Burning in my breast were De Long’s
words Nil desperandum! and my faith in him from his faith in me,
rose. The ice to the southwest, thank God, Dunbar reported as not
so bad as he had found it to the south, though Heaven knows how
that could have been for we had to bridge and ferry five times in one
mile, and in many places to get our sledges over inescapable
hummocks blocking our path, we had to build inclined planes of
snow to their crests and other inclines down the lee slopes, then
heave our sledges up one slope like Egyptian slaves building the
Pyramids, and brace ourselves back to ease them down the other
side. We couldn’t even coast down the lee slopes, for then the
sledges buried their noses so deeply in the banks at the bottom that
extricating them was horrible work.
So like horses (though sometimes seahorses as we plowed
through water to our waists) we worked along through the ensuing
week, making about a mile and a half a day over the ice. We were
all in a bad way from exhaustion, and oddly enough the brilliant sun,
cold though it was around 28° F., burned and blistered our faces and
added to our general suffering. On top of that a mental trouble
became noticeable; the men were grumbling because no news of
our position or of our progress had been posted, for they had all
seen the captain taking sights and felt that the results ought to be
made known. As the week drew along and nothing was said, they
began to get suspicious, but none dared ask the captain; when they
questioned me, I merely shrugged my shoulders, saying,
“Don’t ask me, boys. I’m only an engineer! Why should I bother
with the navigation?”
As for the growling which was plentiful over the shortened rations,
I could point out that our progress was slower than originally
expected so we must naturally stint ourselves to stretch them out
longer, and thus allayed any suspicion on that score.
But De Long had a busy time dodging his other officers, lest they
ask embarrassing questions. With Chipp and Danenhower this was
not difficult, for Chipp could hardly walk and Danenhower could
hardly see. Keeping away from them was easy. Ducking Dunbar was
much harder, but since the ice-pilot was ahead laying out the road
most of the night, the skipper with some finesse managed to steer
the discussions into safer channels on the few occasions when he
couldn’t avoid him. Ambler, however, turned out to be a Tartar who
from the very nature of his duties the captain couldn’t keep away
from. Finally, concluding that with Ambler confidence was better
than suspicion, he acquainted him also with the reasons for our
sudden change of course, and I must say for the doctor that I think
he took it better than I did, for early in the week when he was told,
he was more than having his hands full between swinging a pick-ax
on the roads and tending his patients, especially Chipp.
Lieutenant Chipp, carried from his sick bed when the ship sank,
was in a bad way from exposure and sleeping on the ice, despite the
fact that he was the only person allowed to take an extra coat. Even
the week’s rest before we started sledging south helped him little
and he fainted in his harness the first day out. After that, though
hauling no longer on the hospital sledge, he had since barely
managed to stagger along with it as it went.
The day we started southwest, so badly off was Chipp that slow as
we went that day, he could not hobble well enough to keep his
emaciated and pain-racked body up with the hospital sledge and
was delaying even its snail-like progress. De Long, bringing up the
rear guard, ordered him to climb aboard the sledge and ride. Chipp
made no move to get aboard, but instead staggered onward.
Without a word, De Long picked him off the ice, laid him gently on
his back on the sledge, and ordered briefly,
“You stay there, Chipp, or I’ll hand you a courtmartial for
insubordination! You’re delaying our progress when you walk!”
 Poor Chipp, broken-hearted at being made a burden for his
overladen shipmates to drag, tried to roll off the sledge to the snow,
but so weak was he that he could do no more than turn on his face
when he stuck, clawing feebly, trying to pull himself off the sledge.
Failing even in that, he looked pitifully up at De Long by his side.
“Don’t make them drag me, captain, please! I’m all gone anyway.
Take me off!” he begged. “You’d better leave me behind right here!”
“Shut up, Chipp,” ordered De Long abruptly. “You’ll do what I say
like everybody else in this outfit! Quit worrying; you’re going to get
better. But better or worse, nobody gets left behind while there’s a
man alive able to drag him along!”
He motioned to Lauterbach, Alexey, and Danenhower, dragging
the sledge.
“Get underway now, men. I’ll help you till I can send someone
else.” And with the captain pushing and the others pulling, the
sledge started again with the enfeebled Chipp face down on the
load, scarcely able to cling to the lashings, weeping bitterly.
We got along. But I might here mention that for every mile of
progress over the ice that we made, we had to walk thirteen miles!
To advance a boat sledge took the whole working party together; to
advance a provision sledge half loaded took half the party, so to get
our three boats and four provision sledges (the dogs handled the
other one) along one mile meant that seven times under load and
six times empty-handed, thirteen times in all, the staggering working
party had to traverse that mile of ice. If the edge of the pack should
by God’s grace turn out to be no further than a hundred miles from
our starting point, still when we reached it we should have tramped
thirteen hundred miles over that terrible ice, seven hundred of those
miles dragging inhuman loads! If it were twice as far—God help us
then!
So we went along, over what Jack Cole, ruefully tugging in the
lead harness, called,
 “’Tis the rocky road to Dublin, me byes. Yo heave! Shure an’ we
should be nearly there by mornin’!” But I knew it would be many a
morning yet, if ever, ere Jack raised Dublin or anything like it over
that ice horizon.
July 3rd arrived with good enough weather for the captain to get
another set of observations of the sun, which on working out, he
communicated to me. The new position was in latitude 77° 31′ N.,
longitude 150° 41′ E., which was to some degree gratifying, for
while it was still thirteen miles north of where we left the Jeannette,
it was thirteen miles generally southwest of where we were on June
25th, and checked very well with both the course we had been
steering and our distance logged over the ice since then, twelve
miles. This was cheering, for it seemed to indicate no ice drift at all
for the last eight days, and things began to look up. Only thirteen
miles more and we would be as far south as when we started
sixteen days before! Naturally, while all this cheered De Long,
Ambler and myself, the knowledge would have cheered nobody else,
so no notice of it was posted and no mention made.
July 4th we celebrated on the ice, without any fireworks or
speeches, simply breaking out our small boat flags (the woolen ones
only) and, so to speak, dressing ship. De Long was excessively blue
all day, for it was the third anniversary of the day in Le Havre,
France, when Miss Bennett had christened his ship with her name,
Jeannette, and he had listened to many glowing speeches of what
was expected of her. Looking at the three small boats which were all
that was left of his command made De Long decidedly sick. Had
there been only the safety of himself to consider the day his ship
went down, I am sure De Long would have gone down with her.
By way of a feast in honor of the day we had our usual short
allowance of cold pemmican which we ate thankfully. I may say here
that pemmican (which is a mixture made of beef pounded more or
less to a powder, mixed with raisins, and then the whole stirred up in
boiling fat which when cold is packed in cans) while a highly
nutritious and palatable food served in cold slices which we ate like
cake, as a steady diet gets infernally tiresome. Alexey on this day,
with a naive faith in the white man’s powers, feeling that a holiday
called for something better, in all seriousness told the doctor that he
would take mutton instead!
At this, Lee, my machinist, who was also in the doctor’s tent, very
gravely informed the doctor of the best way to make Rhode Island
clam chowder, which he felt was the only proper dish for any July
4th banquet, and the poor doctor, with all this gastronomical advice
bringing back recollections of past Independence Day feasts back in
old Virginia garnished with everything from savory baked hams to
candied sweet potatoes, found his mouth watering so that he lost all
interest in his cold pemmican and fled from the tent.
Underway again that evening, we stumbled along as before,
heaving, holding back, building ice bridges, ferrying on bobbing floes
across the water leads when we did not fall into them. De Long, his
mind a little relieved about the drift, spent fewer hours in the rear
and most of the night tramping over our route, for the first time
beginning to take some notice of individuals and what they were
doing. Coming up to one bridging job, where I had a piece of
floating ice jammed into a crack some fifteen feet wide while the
crew were dragging sledges across it to the southern side, he
noticed that Collins, standing at the edge of the gap, was holding
the line securing the makeshift bridge in place.
“Mr. Collins,” said the captain icily, “you have many times in
disrespectful language informed me that you didn’t ship to be
treated as a seaman. I can’t allow you to go home, claiming that I
forced you to work as one even to save your own life. Give that rope
to one of the men!”
Collins made no move to obey. Instead for perhaps half a minute
he stood glaring like a tiger at De Long, till the latter, noting Seaman
Dressler close alongside, sternly ordered,
“Mr. Collins, give that rope to Dressler, and don’t let me catch you
putting your hand to another line until I order you! You are still
under suspension awaiting trial and don’t you forget it!”
Collins, ready to burst with anger, slowly passed over the line and
without a word dropped to the rear.
We moved along. Under the continued burning rays of the sun,
the snow melted and drained away from the surface, making the
going a little easier, and our consumption of food lightened up our
loads, still further aiding our speed, but our personnel troubles
increased.
Ambler was particularly burdened. Ten days of riding on the
sledge and careful medical attention had so built up Chipp that he
could walk again, and with that little improvement, he began to nag
the doctor to put him off the sicklist and restore him to duty in
command of one of the parties. Danenhower also, his physique
improved by the enforced exercise he was getting in walking after
his long confinement aboard ship, began to make the same demand,
though he could hardly see through his one heavily shielded eye.
Ambler naturally enough refused both requests. As a result, daily
when he came into his tent after having wielded a pick-ax all night
long on the roads, and crawled horribly tired into his sleeping bag to
rest, it was only to listen to his two blessed invalids exchanging
sneering remarks about his medical competence because he would
not restore them to duty. Finally, unable to stand it further, he burst
out,
“For God’s sake, shut up, both of you! Dan, if you’d obeyed my
orders on the ship, one of your eyes would be well now! And you,
Chipp, a little while ago were begging us to leave you on the ice to
die! Now that you’re both barely able to get yourselves along, you
want me to risk other men’s lives by putting them in your charge,
and I’ll be damned if I will! Was ever a doctor cursed by two such
patients!”
But if his patients aggravated him, his helpers on the road work
tried his very soul. In charge of the road-building gang, Ambler had
as assistant laborers Lee and Newcomb, and to draw along the
sledge with the dinghy which was assigned to him for working in the
open leads, seven of such miserable, broken-down dogs that they
were worthless for any work on the heavy sledges and only an
irritation on his lighter one. But even so, Ambler might
philosophically have accepted the situation and kept on as he was,
doing most of the work with a pick-ax himself, had it not been for
Newcomb. For both the broken-down dogs and Lee with his shaky
legs were at least doing their poor best. Quite to the contrary, our
naturalist, though fully recovered from his indisposition, infuriated
the doctor, himself manfully swinging a pick, by the piddling efforts
which he was pleased to pass off as work. Patiently Ambler showed
him how to swing a pick on the hummocks; then getting no results
from him, sharply ordered him to turn to, only to find Newcomb
more interested in pertly answering back than in obeying. For two
days Ambler, with his southern temper slowly rising, stood it, merely
remarking grimly to me one night,
“If that Yankee chatterbox doesn’t soon do some work instead of
answering me back every time I speak to him, he’s going to get
some medical attention that’ll astonish him!” I watched them
working a little ahead of me that night as I trod back and forth with
the sledges. We had only two pick-axes in our whole outfit.
Newcomb, at the base of a steep hummock, was using one ax in a
pretense of picking at it, while I could see Ambler, standing on its
slippery crest, nervously tightening his calloused hands about our
other pick-ax handle as if debating whether to swing then on
Newcomb’s head or wait till he was a little surer of his footing. While
the doctor was in this uncertain frame of mind, Newcomb below him
quit picking at the ice altogether, lashed a line to his pick-ax to make
it serve as an anchor for something or other, and then, sad to relate,
overboard into an open water lead went the precious pick-ax, line
and all, a total loss!
In spite of the real tragedy which the loss of that pick-ax meant to
us, what happened next made me roar. Ambler’s fingers closed
firmly on the handle of our sole remaining ax, apparently
determined, poor as his shot now was, to swing and make an end of
the gadfly below him; then changing his mind, he leaped from the
hummock, stopped only a second to wave the pick in Newcomb’s
face while he bellowed,
“You bird-stuffing idiot! If I weren’t afraid of breaking our last ax
on your worthless skull, I’d kill you with it!” and dropping the pick on
the floe, he ran off to find the captain.
A few minutes later he was back, all smiles, to find Newcomb,
instead of manning the last ax, casually scanning the sky for
something really important—gulls perhaps.
“It’s all fixed now, Mr. Newcomb,” said Ambler cheerfully. “I offered
the captain to trade you for another worthless cur for my sledge, but
he couldn’t find one poor enough to make it a fair exchange, so
bless his heart, he gave me Seaman Johnson for my road gang and
said I could do what I pleased about you. So now you’re fired! Get
out of here!”
Newcomb, pert as ever, enquired,
“Discharged, I presume you mean me to infer? How welcome!
What am I to do now?”
“Tie your shotgun round your neck for ballast and jump after that
pick-ax, if you want to do me a favor!” advised the doctor, fingering
the last pick significantly. “Now get out of my way while I work, or
there may yet happen what will go down in the log as a most
regrettable accident!”
 CHAPTER XXX

De Long was left with the problem of how to make Collins and
Newcomb useful members of our primitive community. While Collins,
before the captain noticed him, had done useful work when it suited
him to help, I have little doubt that it was only for the Machiavellian
purpose of building up a brutal mistreatment case against the
captain. Had he been ordered to work steadily in harness like the
others, he would either have flatly balked or else have done it only
as a martyr, neither of which situations the captain was prepared to
cope with. Newcomb’s case was a little different. Had he been my
problem, I am confident that the toe of my boot, properly applied a
few times, would have startlingly changed his outlook both on work
and on keeping his mouth shut when spoken to, but De Long was
constitutionally opposed to physical persuasion. Casting his eye
about the floes, the skipper observed that seals were again
occasionally in evidence, and decided that since both our Indians,
Alexey and Aneguin, were laboring like all the others as pack-horses,
he might well substitute Collins and Newcomb for them as hunters.
Hunting being in all civilized circles a gentleman’s privilege, neither
of these pseudo-seamen officers could well maintain that it was
beneath the stations for which they had shipped, and if they shot
anything, it would be of real value in stretching out our precious
food supply, let alone giving us a change from the pemmican which
constituted the fish, flesh, fowl and vegetable of our unvaried menu.
So promptly providing Collins with a rifle and Newcomb with the
shotgun which he had carried from the wreck, both were turned to
on the floes to see what they could do in earning their passage while
our straggling line of boats and sledges moved on over the pack.
But even so Collins was not satisfied. A member of the party
messing and sleeping in the captain’s tent, his main business in life
seemed to be sizing up what he could find wrong with De Long’s
management of the retreat, to add in his private notes to whatever
else he had accumulated in the way of (in his eyes) errors in the
captain’s judgment. But he must have had a tough time of it, for the
only thing that apparently displeased him now was as he related it to
his confidant, Bartlett,
“The skipper’s always too infernally polite to me, seeing that I’m
served before he helps himself to pemmican, and making sure my
place in the tent’s all right before he’ll crawl into his sleeping bag.”
And under these embarrassing conditions, Collins began his life as
a hunter.
July 10th, far to the southwest, Dunbar sighted a faint cloud which
he announced as land, gravely assuring us that the New Siberian
Islands were in sight. While the skipper was dubious of its being
land at all, knowing (what Dunbar and most of the party did not)
that the nearest charted land, those New Siberian Islands, were still
a hundred and twenty miles off, so that what was seen was either a
mirage or a new discovery, the effect on our progress was magical—
over none too good ice we made three and a quarter miles that day!
In the clearer atmosphere, the skipper got some sights for the first
time in a week which when worked out placed us in latitude 77° 8′
N., longitude 151° 38′ E., to our joy showing that at last we were
south of 77° 18′ N. from which we had started. But both the skipper
and I stared in amazement at our new position, for having by dead
reckoning and compass made sixteen miles to the southwest over
the pack during the week, the sights showed that our actual change
of position in those seven days was twenty-seven miles to the
southeast. So once again the current had us, carrying us where it
would, but since this time it was increasing our southing, we could
only be thoroughly grateful.
That night when (still keeping our actual position a secret) it was
announced that not only were we doing well over the ice, but that a
southerly drift was helping us along, there was a roaring cheer as
the straining men in harness leaned forward, and we got the boats
away in grand style.
 For two weeks we struggled on to the southwest, sometimes
certain we saw land, sometimes certain we didn’t. But it was
discouraging work. Fog, snow, and hail made our lives miserable,
and between the everlasting ferrying over open leads and the
plowing through pools of surface slush, we kept our clothes
continuously soaked in ice water. Aside from the discomfort of
stretching out in wet clothes to sleep in a wet bag on a rubber sheet
sunk in a puddle on wet ice, the interminable wetness began to
finish our moccasin and boot-soles, and now there wasn’t a tight
pair left in the ship’s company. These soles, made of “oog-joog” skin,
a rawhide from a species of seal, were fine when dry in ordinary
snow or ice, but when wet, they softened to resemble tripe and then
under the strain of men heaving hard against sharp ice with their
feet to drag the sledges, they soon let go. As long as the spare “oog-
joog” brought from the Jeannette held out, we patched away till all
hands stood on a mass of patches as they worked, but when it gave
out (and it very soon did), we were in a bad way for substitutes.
First we tried leather, stripping it from the oar-looms, but leather
was not only too hard and slippery for use on the ice but our supply
didn’t last long, and we were quickly reduced to canvas, to sennet
mats woven of hemp rope by the seamen, to rag mats, and even to
wooden soles carved from what little planking our carpenter could
strip out of the bottom boards in our boats. None were in any
degree satisfactory—one hard heave on sharp ice would often tear
the soles off a man’s boots—and frequently before the end of a
night’s hauling I would have half a dozen men straining at the
sledges with their bare feet on the ice, even their socks completely
worn through, while the rest of the gang, whose soles still clung on,
would be spurting a mixture of slush and water from their torn
moccasins at each step.
Between the lodestone effect of the dim land ahead of us, less
snow, a little smoother ice, and lighter sledges, we speeded up. The
ice improved to the point where we could drag a boat with only half
our party, thus advancing two loads at once and having to tramp
only seven miles for each mile made, instead of thirteen as before.
But the cracks in the ice increased in frequency and ferrying and
bridging over them made our lives a nightmare, the mental strain of
forever riding heavy sledges over bobbing ice cakes which
threatened to capsize each instant, being indescribable. And to add
to our worries, our dogs began to get fits, four of our best ones
spinning dizzily in their harnesses before dropping on the ice,
frothing at the mouth when we cut them out of the traces.
One pleasing incident occurred amidst all our hardships. After ten
days of hunting, Collins finally shot a seal in an open lead, which
prize was handsomely recovered by Ambler and Johnson in the
dinghy before it sank. For this we were doubly thankful—after using
his grease to tighten up our leaking boots, we dined most luxuriously
on stewed seal, fried seal, and if only we had had an oven, we might
have had roast seal. But he went very well as it was; after a month
on cold pemmican, it was a feast long to be remembered!
July 16th we struck tough going. The ferrying grew worse than
ever; Erichsen crossing a lead capsized with his sledge and we lost
three hundred pounds of pemmican, a serious blow. A few minutes
later, trying to get to a high hummock to inspect the distant land
now more visible ahead. De Long tried to jump a wide lead, the ice
broke under him and he went in up to his neck. He might well have
gone completely and forever had not Dunbar, who was with him, at
that point grabbed him by what he thought was his fur hood but
which was actually his whiskers, and nearly jerked the skipper’s head
off pulling him out by his mustaches!
Finally on this day, the doctor discharged Chipp from the sicklist,
though doubtful as to how long it might be before Chipp broke down
again. This resulted in a shuffle in commands—Chipp relieved me in
charge of the working force; I relieved Ambler in charge of the road
gang; and Ambler with only Danenhower left as a regular patient,
was detailed to work with Dunbar in scouting out the road. The
doctor offered to join the sledge gang in harness, but we were doing
better there, so the skipper refused. He preferred to use Ambler
simply as scout and medical officer, hoping that his terribly
calloused, corned, and chapped hands might recover enough for
proper surgical work should an accident make any necessary.
The skipper worked out some sights. The latitude, reliable, was
76° 41′ N.—28 miles gained to the south in six days—fine progress,
much more than we were logging over the ice. The longitude,
doubtful, put us at 153° 30′ E., indicating we were still going
southeast though we were heading southwest, but we were not
greatly concerned over that. Anything to the south was cause for
gratitude.
We dragged along five days more. Newcomb at last shot
something, a gull he called a mollemokki, interesting ornithologically
to him, perhaps, worthless to us for food, certainly. The ice grew
rotten; we had more trouble with it. Our men, their eyes and minds
affected by the ice, easily deluded by mirages, were now seeing land
in nearly all directions, south of us, west of us, and even north of us!
And not a day went by when someone didn’t see open water ahead
of us, fine wide-open sea in which we could launch our boats, toss
away our sledges, and sail homeward in comfort!
Instead of that we soon bumped into the worst mess of ice we
had yet encountered, a jumble of small lumps and water, with
numberless large floes tipped on end vertically. With my road gang
and our solitary pick-ax, I started the herculean job of clearing away
some of these hummocks so we might proceed, and was busily at it
when the doctor, bless his soul, came in to report that by retracing
our path northward half a mile, we could then go due west till we
got on the flank of that broken ice, after which we might go
southwest again. I snapped at that; the job ahead of me was like
tunneling through a mountain with a toothpick. So back over our
trail we went with our boats and sledges.
Getting across even that better path was a heartrending job, for
the rotten floes would hardly stick alongside each other, till finally
using all the lines we had, like Alpine climbers we lashed the floes
together while we crossed over, seriously hampered by a dense fog.
It was a long stretch. In the middle of it, we came to morning, our
usual time for piping down to camp and rest during the day, but the
captain, seriously alarmed at the prospect of that rotten and moving
ice disintegrating under us while we slept, belayed the usual camp.
So without rest and only a brief stop for supper, we kept on, till after
twenty-three hours of terrific labor we came in the late afternoon to
a solider floe and stopped at last to rest our weary bones.
The captain, feeling rightly enough that what we now most sorely
needed was sleep rather than cold supper, gave the order for all
hands to turn in. This the men in my tent thankfully did and were
soon stretched out in their sleeping bags, but in the next tent,
assigned to Danenhower, Newcomb, and five seamen, Newcomb
immediately sounded off.
“This is a fine way,” he said sarcastically, “to treat men who have
been working so hard; ordering them to turn in without anything to
eat!”
Lieutenant Danenhower peered in surprise through his dark
glasses at the naturalist who had done nothing all day but carry a
small shotgun.
“Maybe it is hard for the men who are working, Newcomb,” he
said quietly, “but for you and me who haven’t done a blessed thing,
it isn’t, and we shouldn’t be the first to complain now.”
Newcomb ran true to form. Instead of taking the hint thus
delicately conveyed, he retorted angrily,
“I wasn’t speaking to you; I was speaking to these men. I don’t
count myself in the same category with you. I’m a worker!”
Newcomb a worker! Danenhower could hardly believe his ears.
But not wishing to start a row before the men, and not wanting
anyone, least of all a man who passed as an officer with them, to
encourage them in the belief that they were ill-treated, he ordered
curtly,
“Pipe down, Newcomb! That’s enough on that!”
 But piping down was one thing not in Newcomb’s psychology.
Answering back suited him better.
“No, I won’t!” he piped up. “I don’t take orders from you. And now
that the crisis has come, I’m going to meet the issue! You’ve made
yourself disagreeable to me right along, but I’m an officer too, and
it’s got to stop!”
Had Dan been able to see in more than a vague blur, the issue
would undoubtedly have met Newcomb’s jaw then and there. As it
was, without further words, Dan stumbled from the tent to report
the still spouting naturalist to the captain for endeavoring to foment
trouble in the crew.
In five minutes, Newcomb was placed under arrest to be taken
home for courtmartial on two charges:
I. Using language tending to produce discontent among
the men; and
II. When remonstrated with by Lieutenant Danenhower,
using insolent and insubordinate language.
There being little further De Long could then do, he deprived
Newcomb of his shotgun, ordered him to keep in the rear as we
proceeded, and sternly warned him meantime not to annoy anyone
working.
So when late that night we got underway, we had two officers
under arrest—the surly Collins who seemed to spend much of his
time unburdening his wrongs in the ears of my fireman Bartlett, but
in between times making himself useful as a hunter, and Newcomb
who was thoroughly useless for anything.
The land which Dunbar weeks before had sighted across the ice,
undoubtedly a newly discovered island not on the charts, was now in
plain sight only a few miles off, bearing westward. Through bad
gales and over broken pack, with occasional floebergs suddenly
shooting into the air near us, we worked toward it. July 23rd, the
captain’s sights showed no change in our latitude since the 16th; in
that time between our own efforts and the erratic drift, we had been
taken twenty-eight miles due west and were now fairly close to our
new island. We struggled along toward it over badly moving ice, but
at least this ice was firm and many of the floes were large. Collins
finally shot another seal, but it sank before the dinghy could get to
it, and we sadly saw our visions of a second feast dissolve into cold
water. Next morning we pitched camp as usual, with the land
tantalizing us not three miles off but mostly hidden in fog. Soon after
turning in, the man on watch shouted,
“Bear!” and instantly out of their sleeping bags popped Alexey and
Aneguin, eager to get the first bear sighted since our ship sank. We
heard a couple of shots, and our mouths began to water. Um-m!
Bear steaks for dinner! But it was all wasted for soon the two
Indians were back, empty-handed and disgusted. The bear had been
in such excellent trim that they had had to fire at a thousand yards
on a rapidly reciprocating target as that bear humped himself over
the ice, and they had of course missed. However, it didn’t matter
much, claimed Alexey, as the bear was only a dirty brown one and
not very big, a remark which prompted the captain to ask innocently,
“Sour grapes, Alexey?” but Alexey only looked at him puzzled.
Grapes, sour or otherwise, never grew in his latitudes, so I’m afraid
he missed the point. Quieting our disappointed stomachs as best we
could, once more we turned in. But we got the bear. In the late
afternoon, Seaman Görtz, who had the watch the while the rest of
us slept, spotted him once again. This time Görtz kept his mouth
shut while the bear advanced to within five hundred yards of our
camp, and then, unnoticed, our lookout managed to crawl within a
hundred yards of him to plant two bullets in that bear where they
did the most good!
Now that we had him, he turned out to be a very fine bear indeed,
even Alexey admitting that ungrudgingly, and soon the air over that
floe was filled with an appetizing aroma of sizzling bear steaks that
fairly intoxicated us. We envied no man on earth his evening meal
that night as, disdaining pemmican, we gorged ourselves on bear.
But we needed it. When we broke camp and started for the island
ahead, we found ourselves with nothing but moving ice over which
to work our sledges.
For two days, mostly in fog, we fought our way toward that island,
with the floes breaking under us, sliding away from us, and the
whole pack alive around us. A gale blew up, and on the off side of
the hummocks about us, a bad surf broke and kept us drenched.
Finally on the third day, we found ourselves opposite the dimly
visible western tip of the island, with nothing but a forlorn chance
left of ever making the solid ground that so desperately we ached to
rest ourselves on. With but a few hundred yards remaining before
the pack finally drifted us past it forever, we sighted ahead a long
floe of heavy blue ice extending in toward the land, with only a few
openings between the floe and ours. We bridged the gaps, bounced
our sledges and boats over, and made good a mile and a half across
that floe. There we found more broken ice and water, which with
difficulty we started to cross in the fog by passing a line to a floe
beyond and using a smaller cake as a ferryboat, when suddenly the
fog lifted and there over our heads, some 2500 feet high, towered a
huge cliff, and sweeping past it as in a millrace were the floes on
which we rode!
We finished our ferry, ending on a moderate-sized floe drifting
rapidly past the fixed ice piled up at the base of the cliff, with the
southwest cape, our last slim chance to make the land, not far off.
For over two weeks we had dragged and struggled toward that
island; now in despair we found ourselves being helplessly swept by
it!
Our little floe, covered with sledges, men and dogs, whirled and
eddied in the race, spinning crazily, and threatening to break up any
moment, when we noted that if only it should make the next spin in
the right direction, it might touch a corner against the ice fringing
the land. We waited breathlessly. It did!
“Away, Chipp!” shouted De Long, and in an instant our sledges
started to move off that spinning floe. The first got away perfectly,
the second nearly went overboard, the third sledge shot into the
sea, carrying Cole with it, and the fourth was only saved by Erichsen
who, with superhuman strength, shoved an ice cake in for a bridge.
We couldn’t get the boat sledges over; our floe was already starting
to crack up. Working frenziedly as it broke, the few of us left on the
floe pushed the boats, their sledges still under them, off into the
water and the men already landed started to haul the boats over to
them, when away drifted the last remnant of that ice cake, carrying
with it De Long, Iversen, Aneguin and me, together with six dogs!
For a few minutes we were in a bad way, threatening to drift clear of
the island on that tiny ice cake with no food, except perhaps the
dogs; while the men ashore ran wildly along the ice-foot, unable to
help us in any manner.
Fortunately for us, a little further along a swirl drove our floe in
against a grounded berg for a second and dogs and all, we made a
wild leap for it; successfully too, for only three of us landed in the
water. Aneguin, the Indian, proved the best broad jumper. He landed
safely enough on the berg and dragged the rest of us up and out.
Soon reunited again, behind our dripping captain the entire ship’s
company straggled across the ice-foot to solid ground (the steep
face of the cliff), where clinging to the precipice with one hand, the
captain for the third time on our voyage displayed his silken banner,
proudly rammed its staff for a moment into the soil, and exclaimed,
“Men, this is newly discovered land. I therefore take possession of
it in the name of the President of the United States, and name it,
“Bennett Island!”
The men, most of them (except the five who had landed with me
on Henrietta Island) with their feet on solid ground for the first time
in two years, cheered lustily. Jack Cole then sang out,
“All hands, now. Three cheers fer Cap’n De Long!” in which all
again joined except Collins and (for the first time in his life managing
to keep his mouth shut when anybody gave him an order)
Newcomb.
 But our happy captain, not noticing that, turned to his executive
officer and jocularly remarked,
“We’ve been a long time afloat, Mr. Chipp. You may now give the
men all the shore leave they wish on American soil!”
It was July 28th when we landed; we stayed a week on Bennett
Island, resting mainly, while Nindemann and Sweetman worked
strenuously repairing our boats. All were badly damaged and
unseaworthy from the pounding they had received in the pack. The
whaleboat especially, our longest boat, had suffered severely and
every plank in its stern was sprung wide open. Sweetman did the
best he could in hurrying repairs, pouring grease into the leaking
seams and refastening planks, but it was a slow job nevertheless.
While this was going on, the men explored Bennett Island, which
we found to be of considerable extent (we never got to its northwest
cape), probably thirty miles long and over ten miles wide, very
mountainous, with many glaciers, running streams, no game we
ever saw, and thousands of birds nesting on the cliffs. This island, at
least three times the size of Henrietta Island, nicely finished off the
honors due the Bennett family, for we now had one each for Mr.
Bennett, his sister, and his mother.
Geologically, we found the island interesting. I discovered a thick
vein of bituminous coal, and Dr. Ambler found many deposits of
amethyst crystals, but what took our fancy most were the birds. We
knocked down innumerable murres with stones, which, fried in
bear’s grease, we ate with great relish. But they proved too much for
Dr. Ambler’s stomach, laying him in his tent for over a day.
On August 4th, with the boats all repaired, we made ready to
leave. To the southward of Bennett Island, the pack looked to us
badly broken up with enough large water openings to make it seem
that thereafter we could proceed mostly in the boats among drifting
floes, keeping the sledges for use when required. To this end, since
the dogs would be less necessary and feeding them on our
pemmican an unwarranted further drain on our stores, De Long
ordered ten broken-down dogs to be shot to avoid their suffering
should we abandon them, keeping only the twelve best for future
sledging, including husky Snoozer who was by now quite the
captain’s pet.
By sledge over the pack we had travelled almost exactly a
hundred miles in a straight line from where the Jeannette had sunk
to Bennett Island, though over the winding track as we actually
crossed the drifting ice we had dragged our sledges more than a
hundred and eighty miles and in so doing had ourselves tramped far
beyond a thousand miles on foot. We prepared hopefully to rely
from then on mainly on our boats, and for this purpose the captain
rearranged the parties, breaking up the sledge and tent groups in
which we previously had journeyed.
Into the first cutter with himself he took a total of thirteen—Dr.
Ambler, Mr. Collins, Nindemann, Erichsen, Kaack, Boyd, Alexey, Lee,
Noros, Dressler, Görtz and Iversen.
Into the second cutter (a smaller boat) under Lieutenant Chipp’s
command, he put ten—Mr. Dunbar, Sweetman, Sharvell, Kuehne,
Starr, Manson (later transferred to my boat), Warren, Johnson, and
Ah Sam (who later to lighten still further the second cutter, was
transferred to De Long’s boat).
Into the whaleboat, of which he gave me the command, also went
ten—Lieutenant Danenhower, Mr. Newcomb, Cole, Bartlett, Aneguin,
Wilson, Lauterbach, Leach, and Tong Sing.
Thus we made ready, with De Long commanding the largest and
roomiest boat, Chipp commanding the smallest boat, and me in
command of the whaleboat, considerably our longest craft though
not our greatest in carrying capacity. And promptly there flared up in
the Arctic an echo of that Line and Staff officer controversy agitating
our Navy at home. (At home, it lasted until the Spanish War showed
that we engineers were as important in winning battles as deck
officers, and maybe more so.)
 I, as an engineer officer, belonged to the Staff; Danenhower, as a
deck officer, belonged to the Line, which alone maintained the claim
to actual command of vessels afloat. A whaleboat was not much of a
vessel, but nevertheless Danenhower, when he heard of the
assignments, promptly informed me he was going to protest to the
captain.
“Go ahead, Dan,” I said. “That’s perfectly all right with me.” So the
navigator went to the captain to object to a staff officer being given
command while he, a line officer, was put under my orders. In that
congested camp on Bennett Island, he didn’t have far to go to find
the skipper.
“Captain,” asked Dan, “what’s my status in the whaleboat?”
“You are on the sicklist, sir,” replied De Long.
“Who has command of the boat?” persisted Dan.
“Mr. Melville, under my general command.”
“And in case of a separation of the boats?” questioned the
navigator. “Suppose we lose you?”
“In that case,” said the captain, “Mr. Melville has my written orders
to command that boat and what to do with her.”
“Am I under his orders?”
“Yes, so far as it may be necessary for you to receive orders from
him.”
“But that puts me under the orders of a staff officer!” objected
Dan strenuously.
“Well, you’re unfit to take command of the boat yourself,” pointed
out the skipper. “You can’t see, Mr. Danenhower. I can’t put you on
duty now. So long as you remain on the sicklist, you will be assigned
to no military control whatever.”
“Why can’t I be put in a boat with a line officer, then?” asked Dan,
the idea of having to report to a staff officer rankling badly.
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