Perhaps the shipping situation called most for legislative investigation. The paramount need of the Allies was for 6,000,000 tons annually, and the British Shipping Controller warned that if the United States could not produce this tonnage to replace the losses by submarines the Allies' military and naval efforts would be crippled. The construction of new tonnage in American shipyards had been beset by personal conflicts in the shipping administration, resulting in reversals of policy and retarded operations. Edward J. Hurley, chairman of the Shipping Board, told the Senate investigating committee that one obstacle to the expeditious pursuit of the vast program of ship construction was that it had been superimposed on an equally extensive naval program. When war was declared 70 per cent. of the eighteen prominent shipyards then in existence were overtaxed by the naval program, while only the remaining 30 per cent. of the yards could be utilized to proceed with the mercantile ship program. The task was to bring an adequate merchant marine into being to assist the Allies and he assured the committee (December, 1917) that it was being accomplished with the utmost dispatch despite past dissensions and many obstacles. The number of ships under construction or contract was 1,427, representing 8,573,108 dead-weight tons. Of this number 431 were ships embracing 3,056,000 tons which were in course of building in the yards for private and foreign owners and had been commandeered for war service under Government order. The rest were composed of 559 steel ships of 3,965,200 dead-weight tons, 379 wooden ships of 1,344,900 dead-weight tons, and 58 composite ships of 207,000 tons. The main need in proceeding with this huge program was shipyard space. New yards constructed and tonnage contracts awarded to each called for a constant expansion in the shipping organization, so that by the end of 1917 the Shipping Board controlled 132 yards, of which only 58 were old establishments, the remainder, 74, being new.
The burden imposed on American shipyards can be realized by contrasting their output in the prewar period with the total tonnage under construction for both the navy and the Shipping Board. The navy program was the equivalent in value, and therefore in shipbuilding effort, of 2,500,000 tons of merchant shipping. The mercantile marine program represented a tonnage of over 8,500,000. Here was 11,000,000 tons being produced by American shipyards whose greatest previous output in one year had only amounted to 615,000 tons according to Mr. Hurley. For 1918 he promised an output of 6,000,000 tons. Of the vessels under contract a good proportion were of 7,500 tons or more, classified as cargo steamers, and of these a number were designed specially for transports.
Tonnage being the immediate need, the Shipping Board did not wait for the completion of the new construction to supply it. As a war emergency measure it requisitioned all American ocean cargo and passenger-carrying vessels over 2,500 tons. This step was taken as a means to control freight rates as well as to enable the Government to command the tonnage it needed for war purposes. American merchant vessels for oversea traffic exceeded 2,000,000 tonnage. Some had already been requisitioned by the army and navy. With the exception of craft taken over for Government service, the vessels were left in their owners' hands for operation on Government account as the Shipping Board directed.
Between 600,000 and 700,000 tons of German shipping seized in American ports had already been utilized as troop transports and freighters for reenforcing the American army in France. These vessels included the Leviathan, formerly the Vaterland, which was capable of carrying 10,000 troops on a single voyage, but the number was limited to 8,000 to insure comfort. In January, 1918, it was disclosed that the Leviathan, with fifteen other former German ships, had safely reached Entente ports laden with men and supplies. The announcement was made from the American army headquarters in France to disprove false reports circulated in Germany belittling the assistance rendered the Entente cause by the use of these vessels. They had, on their first voyage, escaped the submarines, a feat which was not palatable to Germany, who sought to bolster up a waning popular confidence in the U-boat campaign. The German vessels which had run the gantlet, besides the Vaterland, were the Covington (ex-Cincinnati), America (ex-Amerika), President Grant, President Lincoln, Powhatan (ex-Hamburg), Madawaska (ex-König Wilhelm II), George Washington, Mount Vernon (ex-Kronprinzessin Cecilie), Agamemnon (ex-Kaiser Wilhelm II), Aeolus (ex-Grosser Kurfürst), Mercury (ex-Barbarossa), Pocahontas (ex-Princess Irene), Huron (ex-Friedrich der Grosse), Von Steuben (ex-Kronprinz Wilhelm), De Kalb (ex-Prinz Eitel Friedrich).
A further step to expedite the shipment of men and supplies to Europe was the formation of a Committee of Shipping Control, composed of American and Allied membership. Its chief object was to endeavor to fulfill Secretary Baker's expectation that 1,500,000 American troops and their requisite equipment could be landed in France in 1918 if sufficient shipping was available. It was endowed with power of absolute control in the allocation of all tonnage on both sides of the Atlantic, and aimed to end the complications and delays that had hitherto prevented the fullest use of American shipping for war purposes.
The Shipping Board had succeeded in turning over to the War Department over 1,000,000 tons of ships on the bare board basis for the transportation of soldiers, live stock, and munitions. Much of this tonnage was commandeered by the Government for that purpose, the shipyards not being sufficiently advanced in their work to provide much new construction. To facilitate the production of the enormous amount of new tonnage under way the Board sought a further appropriation of $800,000,000, increasing the amount Congress had authorized for the shipping program to $2,100,000,000.
CHAPTER XIII
FOOD AS A WAR FACTOR
Economic conditions generally had been shaped and dictated by the nation's entry into the war. The financial advantages which the country enjoyed in the two previous years through being neutral and not belligerent, disappeared with the war declaration; but the accumulated resources of the country's previous neutrality remained a continuing bulwark, and its distance from the theaters of war gave the country certain economic advantages of a neutral.
The situation greatly changed upon the United States throwing its entire resources into the common stock of the Entente Allies. The Government's enormous advances of credits to them took place when its own war requirements were even larger. Shipments to the Allies of maximum consignments of food and equipment proceeded in face of heavy home demands for the same products. The abnormal efforts with which the Shipping Board set about building new ships to repair the ravages of the submarines coincided with unexampled calls upon the mills for domestic needs. Such developments could not occur without profoundly affecting American finance and production; especially in view of the intensified economic strain on belligerent Europe by the continuance of the war through another year and the reliance of the Allies on American aid.