Credit must be given the Fuel Administration for the large measure of success which it finally secured. It was slow in its early organization and at first failed to make full use of the volunteer committees of coal operators and labor representatives who offered their assistance and whose experience qualified them to give invaluable advice. But Garfield showed his capacity for learning the basic facts of the situation, and ultimately chose strong advisers. When he entered upon his duties he found the crisis so far advanced that it could not be immediately solved. Furthermore, in a situation which demanded the closest coöperation between the Fuel and the Railroad Administration, he did not always receive the assistance from the latter which he had a right to expect.
As a war measure, the temporary nationalization of the railroads was probably necessary. Whatever the ultimate advantages of private ownership and the system of competition, during the period of military necessity perfect coördination was essential. Railroad facilities could not be improved because new equipment, so far as it could be manufactured, had to be sent abroad; the only solution of the problem of congestion seemed to be an improvement of service. During the first nine months after the declaration of war a notable increase in the amount of freight carried was effected; nevertheless, as winter approached, it became obvious that the roads were not operating as a unit and could not carry the load demanded of them. Hence resulted the appointment of McAdoo in December, 1917, as Director-General, with power to operate all the railroads as a single line.
During the spring of 1918 the Administration gradually overcame the worst of the transportation problems. To the presidents and management of the various railroads must go the chief share of credit for the successful accomplishment of this titanic task. Despite their distrust of McAdoo and their objections to his methods, they coöperated loyally with the Railroad Administration in putting through the necessary measures of coördination and in the elimination of the worst features of the former competitive system. They adopted a permit system which prevented the loading of freight unless it could be unloaded at its destination; they insisted upon more rapid unloading of cars; they consolidated terminals to facilitate the handling of cars; they curtailed circuitous routing of freight; they reduced the use of Pullman cars for passenger service. As a result, after May, 1918, congestion was diminished and during the summer was no longer acute. This was accomplished despite the number of troops moved, amounting during the first ten months of 1918 to six and a half millions. In addition the railroads carried large quantities of food, munitions, building materials for cantonments, and other supplies, most of which converged upon eastern cities and ports. The increase in the number of grain-carrying cars alone, from July to November, was 135,000 over the same period of the previous year.
Unquestionably the Government's administration of the railroads has a darker side. Complaints were frequent that the Railroad Administration sacrificed other interests for its own advantage. The future of the roads was said not to be carefully safeguarded, and equipment and rolling stock mishandled and allowed to deteriorate. Above all, at the moment when it was quite as essential to preserve the morale of labor on the home front as that of the troops in France, McAdoo made concessions to labor that were more apt to destroy discipline and esprit de corps than to maintain them. The authority given for the unionization of railroad employees, the stopping of piecework, the creation of shop committees, weakened the control of the foremen and led to a loss of shop efficiency which has been estimated at thirty per cent. Government control was necessary, but in the form in which it came it proved costly.
During the months when manufacturing plants were built and their output speeded up, when fuel and food were being produced in growing amounts, when the stalled freight trains were being disentangled, there was unceasing call for ocean-going tonnage. Food and war materials would be of little use unless the United States had the ships in which to transport them across the Atlantic. The Allies sorely needed American help to replace the tonnage sunk by German submarines; during some months, Allied shipping was being destroyed at the rate of six million tons a year. Furthermore if an effective military force were to be transported to France, according to the plans that germinated in the summer of 1917, there would be need of every possible cubic inch of tonnage. The entire military situation hinged upon the shipping problem. Yet when the United States joined in war on Germany there was not a shipyard in the country which would accept a new order; every inch of available space was taken by the navy or private business.
In September, 1916, the United States Shipping Board had been organized to operate the Emergency Fleet Corporation, which had been set up primarily to develop trade with South America. This body now prepared a gigantic programme of shipbuilding, which expanded as the need for tonnage became more evident. By November 15, 1917, the Board planned for 1200 ships with dead weight tonnage 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 industrial evils that had resulted from its operation in the building of army cantonments. The contractors received the cost of construction plus a percentage commission; obviously they had no incentive to economize; the greater the expense the larger their commission. Hence they willingly paid exorbitant prices for materials and agreed to "fancy" wages. Not merely was the expense of securing the necessary tonnage multiplied, but the cost of materials and labor in all other industries was seriously enhanced. The high wages paid tended to destroy the patriotic spirit of the shipworkers, who were enticed by greed rather than by the glory of service. The effect on drafted soldiers was bound to be unfortunate, for they could not but realize the injustice of a system which gave them low pay for risking their lives, while their friends in the shipyards received fabulous wages. Such aspects of the early days of the Shipping Board were ruthlessly re-formed by Schwab when he took control of the Emergency Fleet Corporation. Appealing to the patriotism of the workers he reduced costs and increased efficiency, according to some critics, by thirty per cent, according to others, by no less than one hundred and ten per cent.
By September, 1918, the Shipping Board had brought under its jurisdiction 2600 vessels with a total dead weight tonnage of more than ten millions. Of this fleet, sixteen per cent had been built by the Emergency Fleet Corporation. The remainder was represented by ships which the Board had requisitioned when America entered the war, by the ships of Allied and neutral countries which had been purchased and chartered, and by interned enemy ships which had been seized. The last-named were damaged by their crews at the time of the declaration of war, but were fitted for service with little delay by a new process of electric welding. Such German boats as the Vaterland, rechristened the Leviathan, and the George Washington, together with smaller ships, furnished half a million tons of German cargo-space. The ships which transported American soldiers were not chiefly provided by the Shipping Board, more than fifty per cent being represented by boats borrowed from Great Britain.[9]
[9] In the last six months of the war over 1,500,000 men were carried abroad as follows:
44 per cent in United States ships
51 per cent in British ships
3 per cent in Italian ships
2 per cent in French ships
The United States transports included 450,000 tons of German origin; 300,000 tons supplied by commandeered Dutch boats; and 718,000 tons provided by the Emergency Fleet Corporation.