Skilled shipyard laborers were few in number compared with the need for the army of them that sprang out of our entrance into the war. Some new method of training had to be devised that would quickly prepare green men for capable and efficient service. The same idea of intensive training that proved successful in the preparation of officers for the army and of instructors and workers in many branches of war effort was applied to the shipyard problem. Training centers, which finally averaged two for each of the eleven ship-building districts, were established, each with a staff of instructors composed of men who had had both technical and practical experience and also training in effective teaching methods. To these centers were sent bright mechanics, selected for their ability and promise. After a stiff six weeks’ course, each in some special ship-building trade, they were returned to their respective plants, where they joined the yard’s own training staff and aided in the turning of green men into skilled laborers. Training schools to develop efficiency in the instructors of the training centers were also established, in order to make sure that the right kind of training would be given to the mechanics from the shipyards. Special courses were instituted at these training centers for men who wished to advance and broaden their capacity by gaining a knowledge of allied branches of work. Most of the yards organized training departments of their own which utilized all the assistance they could get from the training centers and also made use of skilled and capable mechanics in their own employ by having men trained in teaching methods instruct them in the art of showing others how to do things and then putting unskilled men into their charge. These methods of intensive training proved to both managers and workers that by them skilled labor in large quantities can be quickly provided.

Safety engineering work aiming to secure and maintain better and safer conditions of working and to enlist the interest and coöperation of the employees had such good results as to reduce materially the percentage of accidents. This went down from the average for ship-building of twenty-two per cent before the war to as low as six per cent in one large plant.

Shipyard publications had much to do with creating a fine community spirit, instilling patriotism, broadening outlook and inspiring the workers with zeal for the job in hand. The Health and Sanitation section of the U. S. Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation carried on a vigilant campaign to protect the health of the shipyard workers by making sure of a pure water supply, endeavoring to protect them from epidemics of disease, doing away with unsanitary restaurants and lunch rooms in the vicinity of the plants and combating by education and medical clinics the scourge of social disease.

The assembling of such large numbers of men as were needed by each and every one of the American shipyards for the country’s program of ship-building produced, for most of them, a housing problem that was almost as difficult and imperative as was the building of the sorely needed ships. It was an acute emergency and to meet it the United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation was authorized to expend $75,000,000. When the cessation of hostilities came it had built or was building dwelling houses, apartment houses, dormitories, mess halls, boarding houses and other such structures to the value of $64,000,000 and had enlisted the coöperation of municipalities and public utilities companies. In some cases the increase in workers was absorbed by adjacent cities and in others it was sufficient to erect dormitories and cottages in nearby towns. But in several it became necessary to create new towns, upon newly selected sites, and to build at high speed homes and streets and all the many structures necessary for a community of ten thousand or more people. The aim in the building of these towns was to create permanent and attractive homes provided with the necessities and comforts of modern civilization,—well built and lighted streets, provisions for fire and police departments, churches, libraries, schools and theaters,—such as ordered, contented and intelligent communities desire. Some of the best architects and housing experts in the country contributed their services in the making of the plans for these towns, in which building went on at the rate of twenty or more houses per day.

It was no small part of this huge shipping program to provide officers and crews for the ships that were sliding from their ways with increasing rapidity. For, along with the decrease in ship-building, Americans had lost interest in sea service. It was necessary to begin at once the recruiting and training that would man and officer the new ships. Within two months after we entered the war free navigation and engineering schools had been started, and when hostilities ended more than 6,000 men had been graduated, of whom over 3,000 had received officers’ licenses while many others had entered the navy. And in the dozen or more mammoth Naval Reserve Training Stations established and conducted by the Navy Department many thousands of young men were trained for service in all capacities in the merchant marine.

In so enormous an undertaking, entered upon with such scanty facilities and carried on under the stress of such urgent need, it was inevitable that the outcome should not always have equaled the hopes and desires of the country and that the zealous efforts and patriotic purposes of those engaged in it should not always have won complete success. But it was an achievement, within a year and a half, of plants enlarged and constructed for the building of ships, of labor trained for that building, of ships built and put into service, and of men trained to officer and man the ships that was a potent factor in the winning of the war. It was an immense and rapid industrial development made possible only by the ardent coöperation of all the factors of the entire national life necessary, under the emergency, to bring it to success.

CHAPTER XXIII
ORGANIZING THE NATION

Preceding and following chapters show how important a part organization played in the separate phases of civilian support of the war. In every line of war effort there was voluntary and spontaneous team-work on the part of all especially interested individuals who steadily coöperated with and formed a part of the nation-wide organization of that division of national life. The Food Administration and the Fuel Administration organized, each for its special work, the whole country and brought its own organization into touch with the people of every county and every community in the United States. The financing of the war evolved its own formation of a network of committees covering the land for the sale of bonds and stamps. So also in the mobilizing of industry for the support of the war each division of interest drew together in patriotic coöperation and all combined in voluntary team-work. A wide-spreading organization, inspired and held together by love of country, worked here, there and everywhere to aid in clearing the land of enemy spies and propaganda. Women linked up their existing organizations more closely and created new ones for more efficient work in all of the many kinds of war service which they undertook. Even the upholding of the fighting forces by thought and effort for their welfare and happiness was effectively organized. And so on, through every phase of civilian support of the war, the universal individual eagerness to do everything possible was organized into a systematic, effective coöperation that was comprehensive in its scope and was directed by able leadership along definite policies which converged into the one purpose of applying that mobilized effort to the prosecution of the war.

These were separate organizations, each devoted to its own purpose. But interlocking them all, partly by virtue of having conceived and launched many of them and partly by reason of its own purpose, bringing them all into efficient and harmonious coöperation and at the same time aligning the entire country in one vast organization that practically put the whole nation into one huge civilian army working for the support of the fighting forces, was the Council of National Defense.

Created by an act of Congress in the late summer of 1916, the Council of National Defense was not fully organized until March, 1917, when our entrance into the war had become inevitable. In the creating act the Council was charged with the “coördination of industries and resources for the national security and welfare.” It was to consist of the Secretaries of War, the Navy, the Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor and it was directed to nominate to the President an Advisory Commission of seven persons, each having special knowledge of some industry, public utility or natural resources, or being otherwise specially qualified to give aid and counsel in the stimulation, development and coördination of national activities and “the creation of relations which would render possible in time of need the immediate concentration and utilization of all the resources of the nation.”