"The Erector is the fellow that puts the frame in place,

At a speed that makes the Bolter hump himself to keep the pace.

The Reamers and the Drillers have the job of 'making fair'

The rivet holes-between 'em they use up a lot of air.

"And when these boys have shaped things upribs, liners, plates and all,

There comes along the Riveter-did you ever
hear him bawl

To his Heater and his Passer and then his
Holder On,

For the love of Mike to hurry so that he could
use his gun?"

"For the love of Mike to hurry, so that he can use his gun"-the words echo far beyond the Delaware of the United States, where they were first heard in the Pile Driver's chantey at Hog Island.

"For the love of Mike to hurry”—not the Riveter of the Ship alone bawls out the homely call. It is the demand, too, of the Riveter of man's world-of the one nation in whose power it lies now to bind together, in a staunch and unified whole, the craft that must weather mankind's blackest, most evil storm.

This can be only an outline of the greatest

among the world's shipyards, conducted by the American International Shipbuilding Corporation, on the Pennsylvania shore of the Delaware River, between that greatest of our navy yards, League Island, and the city of Chester. It is not finished, although Hog Island's back is already bristling with shipways and the ships are due to sprout upward toward the sky. For the love of Mike, how they are hurrying, so that we can use the guns-the guns that shall keep our merchant ships safe against the stab of the sinister submarine; the guns that shall thunder as our artillery in France; the guns, the deadly little guns, that shall rat-tat-tat incessantly along the lively line we hold as though every rapid thud of the riveters' armies on the hulls of our ships at home were being multiplied a thousandfold out there.

This is the yard that has encountered most delaying handicaps, among them not only obstructions in delivery of materials but the necessity of far more piling work-literally the basis of all construction work-than was originally foreseen.

Perhaps the best index to the spirit which is making this monster shipyard what it is appears in its name. When, a few short months

ago, the magic wand of American constructive genius evoked its first derricks and shanties from the flats that had been given over throughout the ages to the terrapin and the reed birds, finnicky local vanity which previously had not known of the existence of Hog Island-shrieked in protest against the hideous

name.

And what happened? Nothing-just nothing at all. Amid the vociferations of the most punctiliously literary of cities Hog Island rushed on to realization so swiftly that even the oldest of the carps among the carping critics forgot their delicacy and became thoroughly, energetically alive to the important fact that the old, forgotten Island had, after all, bestowed the right name on the new shipyard that is typical of our situation-a situation that spells plainly, root hog or die.

Let us pass-and this is something more nearly vital to another word, and with it to another phrase and phase-the fabricated ship. If Hog Island remains Hog Island, where American shipbuilding confronts that vulgar alternative of root hog or die, the fabricated ship very emphatically embodies the essence of the solution we are up against. And Henry Ford, whatever the criticisms that may be leveled against his project for the fabricated merchant vessel, has formulated the ideal our shipbuilders may well long to attain to. Here is the Ford ideal:

Ships to begin their being on a track-miles in length as the need may be-so solidly built that it can carry the full weight of hull and machinery straight onward to the stage at which the vessel, fully equipped, shall be iaunched, ready to take on her cargo and put

to sea under her own steam. So the Ford automobiles are assembled, in a never ending procession; and so, their maker contends, ships of one standard tonnage can be assembledwith their launchings at the rate of one ship per day, after an allowance of one month for the construction of the track and of six months for the co-ordination of the manufacturing plants in the United States which, each assigned to its particular specialty in the production of the parts, shall then be shipping those parts to the feeding tracks that shall deliver every part to the precise section of the great shipway track, at the precise time when it is to enter into the construction of the nascent vessel.

It is a magnificent ideal. Yet, when all is said and done, it is by no means wholly be

yond the reality that is contemplated, and already begun, at the actual Hog Island shipyard. Except for the Napoleonic conception of the assembling and launching track, with its tremendous problem in statics staring it, Sphinx-like, in the face, Hog Island's shipyard, with its many shipways, is banking on the same system-the system of the "fabricated" ship to which a thousand plants, widely diversified, shall contribute their special parts; to which the feeder tracks shall deliver all those divers parts where needed, when needed; to which our experience in shipbuilding can bring exact knowledge-indeed, a "for the love of Mike" familiarity-with shipway statics instead of the dubiety that must attend the birth of ships over miles of trackage. Above everything, shipbuilders seek easy deliveries; the