"Until within a few years no naval appropriation could pass the Senate which did not meet the sanction of both a Northern and Southern Senator, each of whom was a member of the Committee on Naval Affairs. It is interesting, in consequence, to analyze some of the appropriations between 1895 and 1910.
"In 1899 a site was purchased in Frenchman's Bay, Maine, at a cost of $24,650—far above the assessed valuation—and later an additional amount of $600,000 was expended to obtain there an absolutely unnecessary coaling-station, which has since been dismantled, as it was practically unused.
"At the Portsmouth Navy Yard, so called, in Kittery, Maine, a dock was built at an expense of $1,122,800, and later it was found necessary to blast away rock in the channel in order to reach the dock, at an additional expense of $745,300.
"Between 1895 and 1910 improvements, machinery, repairs, and maintenance in the yard amounted to $10,857,693, although there was a large navy-yard within seventy miles.
"On the other hand, at Port Royal, South Carolina, a dock was built at the insistence of the Southern Senator, at a cost of $450,000, which proved useless, and, although the original cost of the site was but $5,000, it was not abandoned as a naval base until $2,275,000 had been expended.
"Not the least daunted by this extravagant waste, the same Senator determined to have a share of the naval melon for his State, so, with the assistance of the Northern Senator, he obtained the establishment of another naval station at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1901. There was no strategic value thus accomplished, nor was it necessary, with the Norfolk Navy-Yard located at Hampton Roads. The $5,000,000 which has been squandered at Charleston includes a dry-dock built for battleships, costing $1,250,000, but which experience shows can only be used by torpedo-boat destroyers and gunboats. The $5,000,000 could have been employed to great advantage at the Norfolk Navy-Yard, where the battleship fleet generally assembles. A portion even could have been used wisely at Key West, Florida, a supplementary base of real strategic value for torpedoes and submarines—a protection to the Gulf of Mexico and the mouth of the Mississippi River, and on account of its geographical situation, Key West would serve as a base of supplies to the fleet in the Caribbean Sea.
"The purpose of the navy-yards is to keep the fleet in efficient condition. Their location should be determined by strategic conditions, their number by the actual needs of the fleet. The maintenance of navy-yards which do not contribute to battle efficiency is a great source of waste.
"The United States has over twice as many first-class navy-yards as Great Britain, with a navy more than double the size of ours, and more than three times as many as Germany, whose navy is larger than that of the United States.