of seven and a half millions. The
difficulties of building new yards, of collecting trained workmen and
technicians were undoubtedly great, but they might have been overcome
more easily had not unfortunate differences developed between William
Denman, the chairman of the Board, who advocated wooden ships, and
General George W. Goethals, the head of the Emergency Fleet Corporation,
who depended upon steel construction. The differences led to the
resignation of both and continued disorganization hampered the rapid
fulfillment of the programme Edward N. Hurley became chairman of the
Shipping Board, but it was not until the spring of 1918, when Charles M.
Schwab of the Bethlehem Steel Company was put in charge of the Emergency
Fleet Corporation as Director General of shipbuilding, that public
confidence in ultimate success seemed justified.

Much of the work accomplished during the latter days of the war was
spectacular. Waste lands along the Delaware overgrown with weeds were
transformed within a year into a shipyard with twenty-eight ways, a ship
under construction on each one, with a record of fourteen ships already
launched. The spirit of the workmen was voiced by the placard that hung
above the bulletin board announcing daily progress, which proclaimed,
"Three ships a week or bust." The Hog Island yards near Philadelphia and
the Fore River yards in Massachusetts became great cities with docks,
sidings, shops, offices, and huge stacks of building materials. Existing
yards, such as those on the Great Lakes, were enlarged so that in
fourteen months they sent to the ocean a fleet of 181 steel vessels. The
new ships were standardized and built on the "fabricated" system, which
provided for the manufacture of the various parts in different factories
and their assembling at the shipyards. In a single day, July 4, 1918,
there were launched in American shipyards ninety-five vessels, with a
dead weight tonnage of 474,464. In one of the Great Lakes yards a 5500
ton steel freighter was launched seventeen days after the keel was laid,
and seventeen days later was delivered to the Shipping Board, complete
and ready for service.

This work was not accomplished without tremendous expenditure and much
waste. The Shipping Board was careless in its financial management and
unwise in many of its methods. By introducing the cost plus system in the
letting of contracts it fostered extravagance and waste and increased and
intensified the i