SHIPBUILDING INDUSTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. 213 
ships. This industry is already highly standardized. The requirements of land and sea sery- 
ices should be brought as nearly to a common basis as is practicable. 
REPAIRS AND UPKEEP. 
The importance of quick turn around in ports needs no emphasis before this body. The 
advantage of standardization in giving owners and repair plants a reasonably generous stock 
of spares to draw upon is obvious. With greater standardization in building, especially in 
machinery, we automatically get advantages in the matter of prompt availability of parts for 
repairs and renewals, the economy of which speaks for itself. The more general the stand- 
ards, the fewer and less expensive the spare parts each individual ship will need on board. 
Certain parts liable to be needed at sea will always have to be carried, but stocks at terminals 
can be kept lower without danger of delay to the ship. 
Standardization is a natural and inevitable corollary of modern industrialism; mecha- 
nisms are both more elaborate and more generally used than formerly. A plant in Chicago 
manufacturing and selling any one or more of many well-known modern mechanisms must 
consider the ability of its distant customer to keep the machine in condition. What ultimate 
good is a typewriter, for example, which the owner cannot keep in repair; the “throw it away 
and buy a new one” answer is that of the reckless cub salesman, except after the machine is 
worn out or genuinely obsolete. The only proper answer is standardization of machine 
and of such spares as are most liable to be needed, backed up by the most efficient distribu- 
ting agencies available. 
UNIFORM REQUIREMENTS. 
The codification of governmental requirements for merchant vessels under one set of 
regulations should be aimed at; at present these are scattered and come under different de- 
partments for enforcement. 
The reconciliation of the requirements of two or more bodies with concurrent jurisdic- 
tion is very important. The most outstanding case in perhaps that of boilers, the U. S. Steam- 
boat Inspection Service and the Classification Societies each having their own formulae. The 
success which has attended the adoption of the A. S. M. E. Boiler Code for land work needs 
no emphasis. 
That the practical benefits of uniform requirements on an international basis are not lost 
to sight is evidenced by the recent reports of the committees appointed by the International 
Shipping Conference last November. These reports mark a step towards agreement on four 
important questions connected with shipbuilding, namely, life-saving appliances, wireless tele- 
graphy, load line, and passenger ship subdivision. The absence of United States represen- 
tatives on these committees is to be noted, the writer feels, with regret. 
Uniform standards of strength for ocean-going vessels may well be considered; the pro- 
posed international load-line regulations give us a basis. The various classification societies 
each have their own; in practice they are fairly close to uniformity. The extent to which 
their rules could with advantage be standardized might well form a subject for future 
discussion. 
