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ment for this mighty center of shipbuilding will depend wholly upon the wisdom of the legislation by which the nation shall endeavor to build up again its merchant marine. It must be remembered that while this, the greatest of all shipyards, was being completed, others of less extent were being constructed, while each of the old private yards was developed to the utmost capacity of their territory. Not only at Hog Island, but at Fore River, at Bristol and at Newport News are now shipbuilding plants any one of which could undertake all the shipbuilding which was needed in the United States a decade ago. To find reasonable employment for all in future will be no easy problem.

Each of the great yards is a small city in itself. At Hog Island are twenty acres covered with buildingsshops, barracks, mess halls, storehouses, Y. M. C. A. buildings and a shipbuilders' school. More than $9,000,000 was advanced by the United States to meet the necessary needs. A city of 350,000 people could be supplied with the water supply system installed. Enough electric power is distributed to run the trolleys and electric machinery of Providence with its 300,000 people. Seventy-five miles of railroad within the yard are supplemented by hundreds of trucks, motor lorries and travelling cranes.

In all the great yards the questions of first getting the men and then housing them were of supreme importance. From the earliest days of the war the unemployed as a class had disappeared from the United States, the demands of the munitions factories absorbing labor to such an extent that the farm lands of the nation could hardly be worked. Scarcely had the shipbuilding program been determined upon when it became apparent that the nation was going to be dragged into war. That

meant the ultimate withdrawal from productive industry of not less than 5,000,000 men if the war should prove as long and bitterly contested as at that moment seemed probable. Half a million men would be needed for the shipyards. As a matter of fact no less than 625,000 were actually so employed in September, 1918. The problem of where and how to get them was one to puzzle those who must solve it.

Moreover, shipbuilding calls for men of a multitude of trades. To erect the shipyards required armies of unskilled labor, but to build the ships demanded men skilled in trades and handicrafts. Machinists, metal workers of every class, acetylene and electric welders, plumbers, foundrymen, electricians, cabinet workers all find occupation on a modern steel ship. A special type of labor known as shipwrights is required in building wooden ships. It had been thought that men bred to this trade had largely disappeared with the decadence of the industry, but in 1917 an appeal sent out through the agencies of the Federal Employment Service produced the names and addresses of 12,000 ship carpenters within forty-six hours.

While this was reassuring it did not wholly meet the needs of the moment. To build the ships which we expected to need during the war required an army of trained workmen that at the moment simply did not exist. Just as ore from the ground had to be worked over until it became steel plates all ready to be bolted to the frame of a ship, just as clerks and peddlers and bootblacks had to be caught up by the draft and painstakingly educated until they were fit to be soldiers, to fight and to be killed, so the raw material of the shipworkers had to be drawn from trades resembling those they were to practice and educated to the point of efficiency. Accordingly

under the general supervision of the Federal Board of Vocational Instruction schools in shipbuilding, and its various trades were established not merely at each of the great yards, but in many colleges, and trade, technical and manual training schools. In this way a great body of mechanics skilled in the component trades which go to making up a great ship was rapidly being built up when the conclusion of peace laid a staying hand upon all this work.

The building up of any great new industry-and shipbuilding on a large scale was virtually new in this country-creates new issues and educates the public mind to problems of hitherto unsuspected importance in industrial organization. Only in a few great concerns prior to the war had the importance of what was known as "the labor turnover" been recognized. The phrase expresses succinctly the volume of changes in the working force due to a haphazard system of “hiring and firing." It has taken centuries for great organizers to discover how heavy is the burden laid upon their institutions by a system which has made the discharge of a workman the only penalty for the violation of discipline or failure in efficiency. The roving tendency of workmen, ever ready to shift from plant to plant, or from job to job, often as much in search of novelty as in order to better their condition is a considerable factor in the problem. At one time in the Hog Island yard it was found that more than seven times as many men were hired during the week as were left on the payroll on Saturday night. In one yard, in November, 1916, before the war had added to the stringency in the labor market, it was found that of 3,000 men employed less than half had stayed with the concern for eleven months. With this as a basis it was computed that to keep 500,000 men at work in the shipyards

each year will have to see more than a million hired. It is estimated by large employers that to fit an ordinary unskilled workman for the duties of his job costs from five to ten dollars, while an expert workman is worth from thirty to two hundred dollars. A foreman well equipped for his place, may represent a value to his employers of several thousand dollars.

Accordingly all large employers of labor are trying to reduce this "labor turnover" as much as possible, and to the Shipping Board, with its supervision over a labor army that would reach far into the hundreds of thousands it was a problem of vital importance.

The first necessity was for the construction of homes for the workers near the plants in which they were employed. To aid in this work Congress made an initial appropriation of $50,000,000 and other expenditures were made from Government funds. At Hog Island over 5,000 houses were erected, and at Newport News and Bristol small cities were created as by magic for the use of the shipworkers.

Perhaps it was because of the feeling of our people that most of the war-time industries, even shipbuilding, would fall into decadence after the war is over that our Government did not emulate that of Great Britain and build permanent towns for these communities of workingmen. In England the Government encouraged with loans and direct gifts the establishment of permanent industrial villages around the munition plants. It is the belief of the Government there that these plants will now be turned to other productive uses, and that the houses will still be needed for the workers. Permanent school buildings, parks, playgrounds, waterworks, stores and theaters are provided. With us the villages have more of a temporary air, resembling army canton

ments. Barracks and frame cottages are the rule. At Bristol, however, with the financial aid of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, a model town was laid out adjoining the shipping plant. This little city of Harriman was planned from the bottom, with spaces set aside for schools, churches and public parks, and the locations of is quasi-public institutions, like the theater, hotel and department store indicated. Brick and stucco are the materials used, and for families are individual houses of six rooms each, 232 group houses, and a great number of apartment and boarding houses. For bachelors are

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lodging houses, dormitories and a number of small bungalows. The result is a pleasing town in which comfortable homes, at cheap rents, and many advantages only enjoyed in larger cities are offered to the shipyard workers. Hog Island, being close to the city of Philadelphia, needed less elaborate arrangements for housing its working people, but both there and at the plant of the Submarine Boat Corporation at Newark the need that exists has been met by the erection of scientifically designed dwellings.

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