been built at any of the Government yards. Under the spur of war the naval office began to build its own ships and to equip its plants as rapidly as possible for perfect independence of American and English manufactories.

Kure, on the Inland Sea, and Yokosuka, in Tokyo Bay, are both in inaccessible pockets, because of the narrowness of the entrances to the Inland Sea and the channel leading into Tokyo Bay and the tremendous fortification works that have been put at each avenue. Were the existing Japanese fleet to be swept from the sea another could be built at these two plants secure from the guns of an enemy unless the island itself was successfully invaded.

Now, if the statement appearing in the New York Herald, which I have read, states facts, it would not be such a great disaster to this Government, after all, if we are able to do what the Japanese doand I assume that we are able-if you and all the rest of the shipyards should refuse to build war vessels or any armored cruisers, would it?

Captain RANDLE. I do not know.

Mr. KNOX. When was that ship launched?

Mr. DAVENPORT. Is there any statement there that the men working on that ship were confined to eight hours a day?

Mr. RAINEY. They worked two shifts.

Captain RANDLE. That statement in the New York Herald is very obscure, because it does not say how long they were engaged in preparing the drawings and how long in assembling the material entering into the construction of that ship. If you have had every drawing made and every bit of material that entered into that ship, up to her fighting tops, assembled in the yards before the keel was laid, the work could be begun at once. In cases where we have not had an empty slip we have gone right ahead with the contracts on our books and bought the material, and got it all ready for assembling, and then as soon as we had an empty slip we laid the keel, and in ninety days we had the ship in the water.

Mr. RAINEY. But in Japan, if this statement is correct, they have been able to turn out quite a large number of warships since 1904 in a remarkably short time.

Captain RANDLE. It takes a great deal longer to complete a ship. When a ship goes into the water, she is very far from being completed.

Mr. KNOX. They sometimes launch them when they are as low as 38 per cent done. I think that ship was intended to be equipped with Curtis turbines, and they have not left this country vet.

Captain RANDLE. It is estimated that they launched the Dreadnought in six months.

Mr. RAINEY. Where was the ship P. A. B. Widener built?
Captain RANDLE. I can not say. I do not know.

Mr. RAINEY. I have here a clipping from the Cincinnati Enquirer, reprinted in the Washington Post of December 27, 1906. It says [reads]:

MAKING STEEL SHIPS-THEY ARE NO LONGER BUILT, BUT ARE MANUFACTURED TURNED OUT IN RECORD TIME-THE CONSTRUCTION OF METAL VESSELS HAS BECOME A FINE ART, IN WHICH THE VARIOUS DEPARTMENTS MUST WORK TOGETHER WITH INFINITE CARE SIMPLICITY OF METHODS REVOLUTIONIZED TRADE.

Under the head of "Occupations in the United States" the census of 1905 gives to the steel and iron workers the number 203,295.

The operatives engaged in metal shipbuilding, it will be found, constitute but a fraction of the aggregate figure. The bulk of the numbers given is made up of the steel-mill workers and those engaged in the various metal-working trades.

When the tonnage capacity produced is considered, there never was a time in the history of modern shipbuilding when the actual performance and results outweighed in such notable degree the proportionate expenditure in labor and its cost. When a vessel like the P. A. B. Widener, 600 feet in length, is built in four months, with three strikes to contend with, and could have been finished in ninety days from the time its keel was laid had no hindrance intervened, the situation shows that greatly simplified methods have obtained in ship construction. This has been effected mainly within the last ten years. "We no longer build ships, we manufacture them," remarks a directing operator. A similar declaration may be made at the Baldwin Locomotive Works, in the Quaker City, and the watch factory at Elgin, Ill.

It simply is a matter of forming the requisite unit pieces to gauge and template and then assembling them in mass for ship, locomotive, or watch.

MUST COMBINE WORK.

Comparatively certain branches of the shipwright's work may be classed as a ruder art than is that employed upon the engine, when the relative skill of operatives in handicraft and in power machines is under review; still it is out of place to note anything but the means provided to accomplish certain ends. Every man to his trade, every machine to its own task, is the sane allotment.

The ship is a mass of matter which moves in bulk, each joint in its make-up rigidly fastened. ~ This, though Kipling's Scotch marines contend that the rigid hull must be "sweetened" in the give-and-take process to be imposed only by the living gale and its ally, the thundering seaway, until the "reegeedity" is neutralized.

The initial work in shipbuilding must embrace in due order that of the designer, the draftsman, and the operatives of the molding floor.

The process of "molding up" from small-scale, blueprint drawings belongs to the fine arts in ship construction. It is a responsible occupation, and no mistakes can be tolerated.

For here, on a clean, bare floor, with dimensions of 240 by 125 feet, the lines of the ship appear in the required form and in sharp and firm white lines. They represent the fractional scaled dimensions of the blueprints, but they represent them in full-size extensions.

GRAPHIC TRACINGS FOLLOWED OUT.

By these graphic tracings thin strips of basswood are laid down, tacked lightly into position, and duly formed into gauges or templates, from which the yard shops engaged upon material must be guided in their work. The strip templates are stiffened to form and are sure not to lose their lines. They go to operators of power machines in the shops and in the yard, where portable machines are used.

Where the "run" or angle of any piece in the framing and covering of the hull calls for special fitting it receives it from an operative in charge of the form or power rollers. He takes a strip of band iron stiff enough to retain any form his hammer may give it to the hull frame, and fits it carefully, returns to his machine, and runs his material through the rollers until it fits the simple gauge.

But the real gauge work is done on the capacious molding floor of the American Shipbuilding Company and enmirrored with lofty sides of glass it makes an ideal workshop. Every piece of the ship structure is said to be molded here, even the plain lap plates, whose change from the flat rectangle must in curving lines be slight indeed. No rudé sounds, no shade of discomfort obtains in this arena of blueprints and delicate basswood strips. In this regard it is a rest cure that forbids any tendency to nervous prostration.

The simplicity of the methods in vogue here in work of vital importance marks a wide departure from the building up of a model in such a shop, as was once the custom.

USED TO MAKE MODELS.

Only a few years since, at Dumbarton, near the Scottish Clyde, the ship on a reduced scale was made in model and floated in a water tank 200 feet long. In the Chester yard, on the Delaware, the more expensive methods were also in use. As a factor in reducing an otherwise multiple expense account, the simple "pattern" shop fills the bill.

Apart from it and on the yard level is the main shop, which receives the material in steel, the crowding tonnage in plate, and the various structural pieces. The markers, templates in hand, lead off here in preparing jobs for drilling, countersinking, shearing, punching, cutting, and rolling. Work that may be done in the open acreage of the yard is promptly to be treated there, by portable machine tools, to boring, riveting, reaming, and chiseling.

Whole sections can be framed up here and masses of any bulk or weight brought within the grasp of the great traveling cranes can be promptly put in position on the

hull. A forge shop and rivet factory work under one roof in this group of shops, the former with steam hammer and several anvils in active use, while the rivet "chugger" shows an appetite for devouring 44 tons per day of fine, soft bar steel and turning it into rivets.

STEEL SHIPWRIGHTS.

The section lengths of the vessel's keel come from the Cleveland, Ohio, forge works and are welded in the local shop.

"What anvils ring, what hammers beat,

In what a forge, and what a heat

Were shaped the anchors of thy hope,"

conveys a sentiment more correctly applied to the great steel mills and their processes, to the special forge plants as well, rather than to their product in the cold material of which ships are made.

From what sources are the ranks of the steel shipwright recruited? Does the apprenticeship process, that of "the cub" to the mechanic's status, obtain here? Hardly; the rivet heater may pass in due time from this little forge where he is a true whiteheat expert, to the place of riveter. Then there are intelligent helpers and the entire operation of bolting up; that of the screw strain, the hammer blow, the driving home and finishing of the head are matters of familiar observation. If a youth be sturdy and strong in wind and limb, he is aching to play some higher notes in the anvil chorus, and if not afraid of trifles he will "land." The trade of the boiler maker is in certain points so near akin to the work on ships that, minus serious “agony," he may pass from one to the other.

Like the structural steel worker in the building art, they are all cold-metal mechanics, though they want their "buttons" white hot. Then, there is the blacksmith as a recruit for a gap in the lock yard ranks. Naturally, and with few false motions, he should line up with the ship mechanics and grimly hold his own. He must be skillful as well as grim, for a duet with two hammers is a different affair from a solo with one.

CHANCE FOR A FREE LANCE.

Any mechanic trained in the heavier lines of iron and steel work, any machinist handy with a good hammer-not one of the tack pattern-might come in as a free lance here. It's a task where the hammer is king, and this tool in the hands of a master is capable of more efficiency than the average observer dreams of. It is not merely a question of drive and impact; it is the manner in which the blow is delivered; nor is the dominion of the hammer confined to the riveting and cold point closing sphere in its use. In the awkward way this tool can be applied in repeated blows and not effect the result looked for, when a single blow in true hands will do so.

It is an easy transposition in rough mechanism that would find the steel hull operative quite efficient in performing the locking home stunt in the structural steel buildings. But certain operations which the vessel man performs readily would present no trifling setbacks to the other party.

Overhead riveting under the great expanse of a vessel's hull takes "the tuck "out of any man unused to it. Muscular energy of arms and legs is taxed severely. While the building operative occupies a far more perilous calling than the other, the process of hammer action is for him far less severe. In both cases the units of material are marked and finished. The workers do the closing act in the hot clinch of contacts.

A RAPID-FIRE TOOL.

The ship riveter on the water surfaces at least has no fine cone heads to fashion. They drive and fill the counter sink in the sheet, and when that is done change instantly to the sledge and hand chisel, chopping off any projection, for the surface must be flush and show no "warts."

In any work where the operative may stand above it, gravity is his helper, but the contrary is overhead work, where he must lift and strike while the iron is hot, bracing up to his feet soles against adverse conditions.

Under the improved processes one hardly would expect to find a "holder on" of the genus homo in existence at all. This once indispensable link in the rivet fastening chain of labor had to be "on to his job" and be a veritable bulldog in grip and tenacity.

He still exists, but is not on dress parade at all.

The pneumatic tool, something much smaller than himself, he can plant, guide, and control, while the shuddering imp, air driven and fiercely impatient, does the work with multiple bulldog power.

Veteran operatives in this calling speak of the hand calker as little more than a memory now. They refer to him as a prime factor in the labor sum in the days when crowds hastened to view the launch of the iron ship and marveled that it did not sink. Nearly the identical tool which he used is visible now, but entirely disguised in its pneumatic harness-a small cylinder case, with short-stroke piston action, and a weight of only 12 pounds. It strikes a 50-pound blow, and in the calking work its action is upon the square edges of the wide sheets.

Under the slow régime they were planed to a level that left the projecting edge to be closed and driven in to secure a water-tight joint.

A rapid-fire tool, the pneumatic calker, does the joint work now. It is handled by a single operator, and while the task of holding it firmly to its work is by no means an easy one, it will finish 400 linear feet per day of nine-hour piecework. The tool impinges upon the upper surface, taking about one-third of the edge, until it "set home, not to any narrow edge contact, but full, well backed in solid metal, continuous, regular, and displaying a good finish.

Outside of this branch of a great industry pneumatic and electrically driven tools have a wide application. In steam-boiler work as in vessel construction their use is extensive. Obviously, the bulk of work for the compressed-air device is rivet driving, and with machines, according to their duty, weighing only from 12 to 24 pounds. In a three weeks' test at this shipyard in fastening 93,840 rivets an economy as against hand work of 47 per cent is said to have been shown.

DISPLAYS IMMENSE EFFICIENCY.

However this may be, the device displays immense efficiency in a small compass of bulk and weight. It represents air untamed and uncushioned, and there appears to be small chance of upholstering its business end in soft material. The man behind this gun never will suffer from any ordinary racket. It ought to be a favorite with the Japanese.

The operator must be an ironclad, and attuned to the harmony of vibration run mad, for when the thing is alive and no leaks in its energy the shuddering voltage assails his entire anatomy from his scalp roof to his toe nails.

It fails to shake him out of his boots because he has learned to chum with the dwarf that becomes the giant soon as its lungs are filled.

Delicate people, prone to crave for mercy when beneath the roar of elevated trains, would become maniacs in the embrace of the pneumatic imp, and he must be embraced or he won't be good." But how shall widely varying tastes be accounted for?

One lover of pneumatic-power machines has a brace of telephones within 30 feet of another brace of pneumatic calkers. Noticing the boss about to call up "Central" one day, a new operative remarked, "Will I stop the twins, Mr. B.?"

66 Oh, no, them."

was the answer. "Let them rip, my man. I'd be lonesome without

Mr. KNOX. The P. A. B. Widener is a great big steel box. Mr. HAYDEN. Will you not develop that, Mr. Knox? Mr. Knox. I do not know enough about the ship to do that. Mr. MCGREGOR. It is simply a hull, shaped and tapered off at both ends.

Mr. RAINEY. Did you ever see the vessel?

Mr. MCGREGOR. She is a very large vessel. I have seen her photographs and have read the accounts of her launching.

The CHAIRMAN. Let us just get this into the record for what it is worth and all it is worth. In the ordinary course of shipbuilding— and I may say that I grew up alongside of a shipyard is there much significance in the mere statement of time between the dates at which the keel of a ship is laid and the date at which the hull is slipped into the water?

Captain RANDLE. How is that, Mr. Chairman?

The CHAIRMAN. I say, does the time between the laying of the keel and the slipping of the hull off the ways into the water bear any important or definite relation to the time required in the construction of a ship, meaning by "the construction of a ship" the time consumed from the beginning of the preparation of the material until she is finished and equipped and rigged and ready to go to sea?

Captain RANDLE. No, sir; from the time the keel is laid until the ship goes into the water it depends very largely on the usage of the yard. We have such a fine application of overhead trolleys in our yard that we keep a ship on the ways until she is about 65 per cent finished; that is, we put the engines and boilers and smokestacks and everything, almost, on her, unless she is a very large ship; we put all the machinery in her before she is launched. Other ships, heavier ships, we will drop into the water when they are only 35 per cent finished. There is no hard-and-fast rule when a ship shall go into the water. It varies from 35 per cent to 65 per cent finished. We have put some of our ships in at 73 per cent.

Mr. MCGREGOR. So that it might be, that by keeping a ship longer on the stocks, you could complete her really in a shorter time? Captain RANDLE. Certainly; oh, yes.

Mr. KNOX. Tell about putting the armor plate on.

Captain RANDLE. In the case of the cruiser Washington we put the plate on until she weighed somewheres like 8,500 tons.

Mr. HAYDEN. Her main belt had been put on?

Captain RANDLE. Yes; a large portion of it had been put on. Mr. HAYDEN. Had you the upper casemates on? Captain RANDLE. A good portion of them were on. We put more armor upon the cruiser Washington than upon any ship since, because it suited us to do it, and we finished that ship within a month less than the actual contract Government time.

Mr. HAYDEN. What percentage had she advanced toward completion when you launched her, approximately?

Captain RANDLE. I think it was somewhere between 57 and 60 per cent. I think she was 60 per cent finished, the Washington was, when she went into the water.

Mr. HAYDEN. And that you accomplished in about twelve months? Captain RANDLE. Yes; eleven months and a few days.

Mr. NICHOLLS. How many shifts do you work in your yard? Captain RANDLE. Only one. We do not think it practicable to work any more.

Mr. NICHOLLS. What is the length of the working day?

Captain RANDLE. Ten hours. We could not work a second shift. It would be almost impracticable, for the very reason that the work that would be done by the second shift, if a second shift could be gotten together, would not be as good as the work of the shift employed during the daylight. Our electric light casts such intense shadows that we can not work around that light with a shift during the night. We would not attempt it.

Now, do any of you gentlemen wish to interrogate me further? If so, I would be pleased to answer any question you may propound. Mr. NICHOLLS. Have you ever had any demands from your men for shorter workdays?

Captain RANDLE. No, sir; never.

Mr. NICHOLLS. You never had any?

Captain RANDLE. No, sir; never.

Mr. NICHOLLS. How long have you been with the New York Shipbuilding Company?

Captain RANDLE. Since its first organization in 1899.

Mr. NICHOLLS. Have you, in any other firm for which you worked, had demands for a shorter workday?

Captain RANDLE. No, sir; never.