In the latter part of the war Mr. Gompers traveled abroad, as a representative of American labor, and was greeted everywhere with the utmost enthusiasm, while his influence was strongly felt in favor of moderate and sane views as to labor's rights.
The American situation with regard to labor was made much simpler by the organization of the United States Employment Service. This was made an arm of the Department of Labor, with branch offices in nearly all the large cities of every state. It had a large corps of traveling examiners, men skilled in determining the fitness of workers for particular jobs, and it undertook to recruit labor for the various war industries in which they were needed. During the last year of the war from a hundred and fifty thousand to two hundred thousand workers of all kinds were given work each month. In addition to this the Employment Service was a clearing house of information for manufacturers. The Director General of this service was Mr. John B. Densmore.
Labor throughout the country, except when influenced by men of foreign birth who were not in touch with the spirit of America, was universally loyal, and its share in the winning of the war will always remain a matter for pride.
[Illustration: Photograph]
THE GREATEST SHIPYARD IN THE WORLD
View of Hog Island shipyard near Philadelphia, showing the forest of
derricks rising from its fifty shipways. At the time the war ended,
35,000 persons were at work and 180 ships were in course of
completion.
[Illustration: Painting]
THE LARGEST SHIP IN THE WORLD AS A U. S. TRANSPORT
Among the German ships taken over by the United States at the outbreak
of the war was the "Vaterland," the largest ship ever built. She was
renamed the "Leviathan" and used as a transport, carrying 12,000
American soldiers past the submarines on each trip. She is shown here
entering a French harbor at the end of a passage.
CHAPTER XLI
GERMANY'S DYING DESPERATE EFFORT
In the spring of 1918 it must have been plain to the German High Command that if the war was to be won it must be won at once. In spite of all their leaders said of the impossibility of bringing an American army to France they must have been well informed of what the Americans were doing. They knew that there were already more than two million men in active training in the American army, and while at that time only a small proportion of them were available on the battle front, yet every day that proportion was growing greater and by the middle of the summer the little American army would have become a tremendous fighting force.
Their own armies on their western front had been enormously increased in size by the removal to that front of troops from Russia. Hundreds of thousands of their best regiments were now withdrawn from the east and incorporated under the command of their great Generals, Hindenburg and Ludendorf, in the armies of the west. They must, therefore, take advantage of this increased force and win the war before the Americans could come.
The problem of the Allies was also simple. It was not necessary for them to plan a great offensive. All they had to do was to hold out until, through the American aid which was coming now in such numbers, their armies would be so increased that German resistance would be futile. Under such circumstances began the last great offensive of the German army.