FROM A MANAGEMENT VIEWPOINT. 55 



war as to the actual number of men employed on ship construction. That did not mean the 

 number of men, actually in the yards, but the total number of men necessary to build ships, 

 exclusive of the office force and men engaged on plant construction and others. Then, 

 with reference to various navy yards, we had records of the output in terms of deadweight 

 tons. This is a very simple matter to arrive at the output per man per year, expressed in 

 deadweight tons. 



The President : — In comparing the relative efficiency, as between men and manage- 

 ment, you gave the men 30 per cent? 



Mr. Churchill: — In order to answer that question it is necessary to go into the mat- 

 ter of the rather peculiar conditions that existed with special reference to new yards. We 

 all know a great many new yards were started by men who were not experienced in ship- 

 building. That is well shown when you consider that the average number of men employed 

 in shipyards prior to the war was aJbout 50,000 for all the country, which developed, as a 

 matter of fact, into 360,000 in a little less than one year. As I remarked in reading the 

 paper, it was next to impossible to provide efficient supervision for such a force as that— su- 

 pervision by skilled men — as it did not exist. As a matter of fact, they robbed the old line 

 yards to a large extent, and that was the best they could do. 



In arriving at the estimate of 20 per cent due to the men, and 80 per cent due to man- 

 agement, the main difficulty we found was lack of control. By that I mean the schedules 

 of erection, the method of controlling material, the method of controlling costs were, for the 

 time being anyhow, almost totally lacking in the new yards. That the 20 per cent is as- 

 signed to the men is largely a matter of inexperience, judged by the production men in bolt- 

 ing up, driving a certain number of rivets per hour per gang, and other matters in the craft 

 of shipbuilding, and these figures of 80 per cent and 20 per cent are, of course, simply 

 estimates. An analysis could not be made within the short time at our disposal, and it sim- 

 ply indicates that had the ship construction been better controlled through the three methods 

 of which I have spoken — cost, production and material — virtually about 80 per cent of the 

 difficulties encountered in the early stages would not have existed. 



The President : — Then you count the efficiency of the men, without management, as 

 20 per cent, and good nmnaganent as adding to their efficiency 80 per cent — you do not take 

 into consideration the question of labor turnover? 



Mr. Churchill : — That is part of it. For instance, you know, in a great many cases 

 you would have men under instruction in the matter of riveting, and it would take any- 

 where from two weeks to three months before you could put these men out intO' the yards 

 to do work in riveting on a piece-work basis and earn a regular day's wage. After a man 

 finally did learn so that he could accomplish a satisfactory output, some other yard got him, 

 and the men were constantly going iback and forth. 



That is one of the elements to be taken into consideration — labor turnover — that was 

 given due consideration. It was very difficult, due to the method of scamping, as we called 

 it, which existed where the demand for men was so enoiTnous, to prevent men from going 

 from one yard to another; and the way we tried to stop it definitely, as you all know, was 

 through the medium of the Navy Board, and the practical means taken was to equalize wages 



