OUR INDUSTRIAL VICTORY 



By Charles M. Schwab 



Director General, United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation 



SECOND to the great military vic- 

 tory that the American Army will 

 have won in France when this war 

 is over will be the industrial victory here 

 at home. It will be a triumph no less sig- 

 nificant and enduring than that won on 

 the battle-fields. The battle at home is 

 now raging, and victory already is 

 perched on the banner of the American 

 shipbuilders. 



Few persons realize what has been done 

 in the shipyards since we entered the war. 

 Without the constant daily observation 

 of progress, such as I have enjoyed while 

 personally visiting the shipyards of the 

 country since I joined the government's 

 forces, it might well have been difficult 

 for me to grasp the big essential facts of 

 our shipbuilding effort. 



American yards today are building 

 ships faster and better than anywhere 

 else in the world. Our speed-up per- 

 formances have revolutionized the indus- 

 try. In building a huge merchant fleet in 

 two years, or three or five, for that mat- 

 ter, we are doing the impossible ; yet the 

 fleet is coming on. 



The story of our accomplishments in 

 the yards that extend from Maine down 

 along the Atlantic to Florida, along the 

 entire coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and 

 from southern California to the upper- 

 most point of Washington, on the Pacific, 

 is the most amazing account of industrial 

 progress ever written. 



The truth is that we in America have 

 gone to shipbuilding just as we go to any 

 other industrial enterprise. Whether we 

 be making automobiles or harvesting ma- 

 chines, or what-not, we Americans have 

 the habit of going after things with the 

 single idea of getting them done. So, 

 when it came to building ships, we vio- 

 lated every convention, if such a thing 

 exists in shipbuilding, and set to getting 

 the ships afloat in the shortest possible 

 time. 



We were not a shipbuilding nation 

 when we entered the war. Today Amer- 



ica is the greatest shipbuilding nation in 

 the world. The Bureau of Navigation 

 the other day informed Chairman Hur- 

 ley, of the United States Shipping Board, 

 that more tonnage had been built in this 

 country during the last year than in Great 

 Britain. That was one of the most sig- 

 nificant reports given to the American 

 people since the war began. 



ACCOMPLISHING A MIRACLE OF 

 PRODUCTION 



Now, how did America bring about this 

 miracle of production? Before the war 

 the building of a steel ship, from keel- 

 laying to launching, required from nine 

 months to two years. Now we are build- 

 ing these ships in one month. Some have 

 been launched in less than one month 

 from the time of keel-laying. In the old 

 days they used to lay the keel and then 

 figure out where the rest of the ship was 

 going to come from. 



All that is changed now. Today the 

 shipbuilders, with contracts calling for 

 work that will keep their men engaged 

 for months to come, order their material 

 in wholesale quantities. One yard on the 

 western coast has ordered steel for the 

 construction of 39 ships. The only thing 

 that remains to be done in that yard is to 

 put the steel together. 



The men are spurred on by a patriotic 

 desire to help win the war. New methods 

 of fabrication have taken the place of the 

 old and slower ways, and every ship- 

 builder is on his toes, eager to take ad- 

 vantage of any suggestion that lends more 

 speed to his task. 



When the New York Shipbuilding 

 Corporation at Camden, N. J., built the 

 Tuckahoe in 27 days, the shipbuilding 

 world gasped. Practical men at the head 

 of some of our shipyards frankly disbe- 

 lieved the story of the Tuckahoe. They 

 said it was a physical impossibility to put 

 together the steel required in a 5,500-ton 

 collier in that time. But since then the 

 Tuckahoe's record has had to go into the 



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