186 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



applying for employment at this great 

 industrial institution. 



How that condition has been combatted 

 and successfully corrected at Hog Island 

 is one of the really big industrial achieve- 

 ments of the war. Today, instead of be- 

 ing a "horrible example" for every other 

 shipyard in the country, the Hog Island 

 Labor Control Office is fast making that 

 yard a model not only for shipbuilding 

 plants, but for steel mills, munition and 

 ordnance factories as well. 



The basic idea of the Labor Control 

 Office is one of great simplicity — the 

 treatment of the workman as an indi- 

 vidual, not as one of a mob. Nowadays 

 every man who applies for work at the 

 Hog Island yard first passes through the 

 Labor Control Office, where his qualifi- 

 cations are recorded. He is told that 

 he can quit his job whenever he pleases, 

 but that before he draws his last day's 

 pay he must leave the yard through this 

 same office and confide to some one why 

 he doesn't wish to remain. 



Every workman, whether he be a cop- 

 persmith earning $1.50 an hour or the 

 lowliest water-carrier or rivet passer, 

 making only a little more than that 

 amount a day, has the privilege of com- 

 ing to the Labor Control Office and air- 

 ing his grievance, whatever it may be. 

 The time that he loses in making his com- 

 plaint is paid for just as if he were work- 

 ing. It is costly to the yard, for many 

 of the grievances are petty in the ex- 

 treme ; but it is far less costly than to 

 have that army of discontented workers 

 quitting every day and spreading their 

 discontent elsewhere. 



One of the most effective methods of 

 eliminating grievances has been the selec- 

 tion of a corps of intelligent workmen to 

 patrol the yard as investigators. If they 

 "make good" in this work they are even- 

 tually brought into the Labor Control 

 Office as interviewers. 



The ideal interviewer is the occupa- 

 tional expert who not only can win the 

 confidence of the man who applies for a 

 job, but who can "size up" that man and 

 set him to the task to which he is best 

 fitted. But the most important work of 

 the interviewer is to make every work- 

 man feel that he has a friend higher up. 

 Only a few days ago one of the most 



skillful occupational experts employed in 

 this work of interviewing was dismissed 

 because "he didn't know how to smile" ; 

 it was impossible for him to establish a 

 bond of confidence between himself and 

 the interviewee. 



So effective has the work of this Labor 

 Control Office at Hog Island proved that 

 in one week more than 7,500 men were 

 dissuaded from leaving, and were either 

 returned to their old work or transferred 

 to some new task to which they were 

 better suited. 



To keep in touch with the labor force 

 at Hog Island is like trying to know per- 

 sonally every man, woman, and child in 

 a town of 30,000 inhabitants — not only 

 know their individual capabilities, but 

 their idiosyncracies of temperament and 

 their social viewpoint. 



the: development of hog island 



Hog Island, incidentally, is a wonder- 

 ful industrial center. Just a year ago it 

 was an 860-acre expanse of swamp and 

 bog, lying practically inaccessible a few 

 miles beyond the outskirts of Philadel- 

 phia. The work of construction, of drain- 

 ing, and of road-building began in Octo- 

 ber, 191 7, and in spite of the delay oc- 

 casioned by a winter of unparalleled 

 severity, it is today, by virtue of the ex- 

 penditure of $35,000,000 and immeasura- 

 ble labor, an area of magic activity, with 

 more than 70 miles of criss-crossing rail- 

 road tracks ; an electric power plant suffi- 

 cient to supply the combined needs of the 

 cities of Albany, N. Y., and Richmond, 

 Va. ; a water system with twice the ca- 

 pacity required for a city the size of At- 

 lanta, Ga., and a mile and a half of ship- 

 ways stretching along the waterfront. 



From the 50 ways of this yard there 

 will be launched 180 ships, the contract 

 price for which ($230,000,000) is double 

 the entire gross revenues of Bulgaria and 

 Turkey during 1914. These 180 ships 

 will have a tonnage sufficient to maintain 

 more than 400,000 of our troops in 

 France. Seventy thousand freight cars 

 full of material will go into the making 

 of these fabricated steel vessels. 



One important method of increasing 

 the labor resources of the shipyards has 

 been the successful effort to reduce the 

 percentage of accidents, which, in the 



