German and Austrian steamers, including the “Vaterland,” the largest ship afloat, and other passenger craft of the Hamburg-American and North German Lloyd lines. Another and a much more serious effect upon the carrying of American passengers, mails and cargoes was produced when the British Government, under the increasing stress of the conflict, withdrew month after month from overseas service to and from American ports its own passenger ships and freighters, for the transport service of the gathering British armies and for the auxiliary service of the war fleets. Then the lack of an adequate merchant shipping of its own began to be severely felt throughout the United States.
In the autumn and winter of 1914 agriculture, both North and South, was gravely depressed by the inability to export grain, provisions and cotton, because of the scarcity of ocean ships. Freight rates soon became exorbitant. In Dec. 1914 the freight on cotton from New Orleans to Rotterdam had risen to three or four times its pre-war figure, or to $2 per hundredweight. Grain in July 1914 had been carried from New York to England for four or five cents a bushel. In Dec. 1914 the cost was 16 to 17 cents, and it still went on advancing. The Democratic party, in power at that time, had as a whole opposed shipping subsidies, but in this crisis the Wilson administration early in 1915 brought forward in Congress a proposal to create a great merchant marine under government ownership and operation. This proposition for what was stigmatized as a dangerous adventure into state socialism was sharply opposed in Congress by conservative Democrats and the great body of Republicans. Meanwhile, the crisis continuing, Great Britain, France and Norway in their acute need of ships to make up for losses by German submarines, began to place contracts for new tonnage in the established and not over-busy shipyards of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States. In the report for the fiscal year ending June 30 1916 the Commissioner of Navigation noted that of ships building or ordered at that date in American yards “fully 125,000 tons were for foreign shipowners,” and that “since July 1 1916 the tonnage ordered in American yards for foreign shipowners exceeded that ordered for American owners.” Many of these vessels, it transpired, were being built by funds furnished or guaranteed by the British Government.
So much antagonism had been created by the proposal for a government-owned and operated merchant marine that it was not until Sept. 7 1916 that the Shipping Act desired by President Wilson was passed, and then in a much-amended form with government ownership and operation reduced to a temporary character. Section 3 of this important law provided:—
“That a Board is hereby created, to be known as the United States Shipping Board, and hereinafter referred to as the Board. The Board shall be composed of five Commissioners, to be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate; said Board shall annually elect one of its members as chairman and one as vice-chairman.
“The first Commissioners appointed shall continue in office for terms of two, three, four, five and six years respectively from the date of their appointment, the term of each to be designated by the President, but their successors shall be appointed for terms of six years, except that any person chosen to fill a vacancy shall be appointed only for the unexpired term of the Commissioner whom he succeeds.”
Under the authority of this act the President appointed on Dec. 22 1916 the first Federal Shipping Board, headed by Mr. William Denman, an admiralty lawyer of San Francisco. Not one of the members of the Board had ever operated American-flag ships in ocean commerce. Under the Act the Board was authorized to form a shipping corporation with a capital stock not exceeding $50,000,000, of which a majority was to be held by the United States for the purchase, construction, equipment, lease, charter and operation of merchant vessels in the commerce of the United States. This became known as the Emergency Fleet Corporation. Its power to operate vessels would cease, under the original Act, five years after the close of the war.
Less than four months after the appointment of the first Shipping Board the United States itself entered the World War, and the powers and resources of the Board were immensely increased by war legislation. Vast sums of money were placed at the disposal of the Board for the rapid construction of merchant ships on a scale before undreamed-of. Chairman Denman resigned on July 24 1917, and the President nominated in his place Edward N. Hurley, who had been the President of the Illinois Manufacturers' Association, an organization long committed to the development of the merchant marine. A subsequent change made Charles M. Schwab, the steel manufacturer and head of the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., the Director of the Emergency Fleet Corporation. Under the stimulus of Messrs. Hurley and Schwab, the war programme of merchant shipbuilding, which had at first lagged badly, began to take on a new life and vigour. These men had not only directed their vast organization, but aroused the country to respond with all its wealth and power to Mr. Lloyd George's appeal for “Ships, and more ships and yet more ships,” to compensate for the havoc wrought by the German submarines. When the United States entered the war in the spring of 1917 there were in the country 37 steel shipyards with 162 ways, and 24 wooden shipyards with 72 ways, capable of launching vessels of 3,500 dead-weight tons. At the signing of the Armistice there were in all 223 shipyards, steel and wood, with a total of 1,099 ways.
There is no parallel in history for this swiftness with which additional shipyards were created. In April 1917, when the United States declared war, every one of the 234 shipways in this country was occupied by a vessel under construction—in part for American owners, in part for foreign owners, the remainder for the navy or other branches of the Government. It was absolutely necessary to create at once the additional facilities required for the building of the 3,115 vessels of a total of 17,276,318 dead-weight tons provided for in the maximum building programme of the Shipping Board. Scores of new shipyards, for steel and wood vessels alike, had to be built. Proper sites were rapidly selected on the Atlantic, the Gulf and the Pacific seaboard, the yards hurriedly laid out, and the requisite tools and machinery installed. This work was pushed with the utmost vigour. Long before the new yards were ready a nation-wide movement had started to recruit an army of shipyard volunteers. It was represented to the workers that they were as truly serving the Allied cause as if they had enlisted in the navy or army. This new crusade was advanced by the State Councils of Defense and by the Department of Labor. Within the first two weeks no fewer than 280,000 workers were enrolled. At the signing of the Armistice 381,000 men were employed in the old and new American shipyards, as against 44,000 when the war began.
American shipyards before 1917 were adequate only for the fairly steady demand of the coast and lake trades and for the requirements of the navy, which, however, were partly filled from Government yards. Only now and then was an overseas steamer constructed. But the coast and lake trades of the United States employ many relatively large and heavy vessels of from 6,000 to 10,000 tons, fit for the 2,000-m. voyages from Portland, Boston, New York and Philadelphia to the Gulf of Mexico, or the 6,000-m. voyages through the Panama Canal between the Atlantic and Pacific seaports. Six or seven yards on the Atlantic and two on the Pacific before the war were capable of building the most powerful dreadnoughts and armoured cruisers. Ocean shipyards, large and small, possessed well-trained and experienced managers and workmen, and there were also many excellent shipyards on the Great Lakes. These efficient staffs were drawn on for the more responsible positions in the new war-born shipyards. The great body of 381,000 workers enlisted were, of course, unfamiliar with ship construction. Most of them had never laboured in a shipyard of any kind. There were thousands from the general building, electrical and other engineering trades, and other thousands from inland farms. It was a composite array, and there was undoubtedly at first much inefficiency and shirking. But the men already trained were set to show the others. Proficiency was rewarded by high wages. The incompetent were gradually weeded out. Appeals to patriotism were effective. Riveting and other work was “speeded up” by offers of prizes, and more and more all hands were made to realize that they were taking an essential part in the winning of the war.
