Rand mines in South Africa. Hog Island's capacity is 75,000 feet of air per minute. The guns of the riveters will be well supplied.

Meanwhile, the dredges are at work in the mud flats and shallows of the Delaware preparing the west basin where the ships shall be completed and outfitted-28 of them at one time. The plans call for an 18-foot depth of water, and that means the dredging of 3,500,000 cubic yards-about the size of one of the Panama Canal dredging jobs, but due to be rushed through in record time, because it is merely preliminary to the real tasks of construction here. The berthing of 28 big merchantmen calls for a dock that shall be 1,800 feet in length, supplemented by seven piers, each 1,000 feet long. New York alone affords parallels for these great piers.

If, given a real bird's-eye for this bird's-eye view of Hog Island as it is to-day, one were to keep on peering down upon the scene it presents, he would discern, amid the spreading maze of derricks, trestles, piles and roofs, thousands of moving objects that never seemed to rest. They are the men of Hog Island on whom, more than on the gigantic forces science enables them to wield, the launching this year of those all-important new ships depends. For the shipyard, if it is to make good its general manager's bold defy of mischance and words of ill omen, must strike the spark of enthusiasm from every mother's son of them now. Plain greed brings its thousands, avid of the high wages. Vigorous ambition brings its throngs, ready to use any angle of shipbuilding as a rung in the ladder. Plodding industry sends crowds, willing enough to do their day's work for the day's pay.

But none or all of these motives are going to be enough. The task lies under a handicap which cannot be overcome unless, beyond mere sordidness and even beyond clean, high minded patriotism, there shall burn that fierce, unquenchable fire which makes men win battles and preserves dash and spirit throughout long campaigns. Even money—even the billion of dollars the Emergency Fleet Corpora

tion is spending for its ships this year is not enough to lure over the top the men who are needed to launch the ships into the water. We can blame ourselves for this thing, too.

The labor power of the United States amounts to 40,100,000 workers, including 29,650,000 men. The Department of Labor believed, at Christmas time, there were among those 29,650,000 men no fewer than 136,500 available for ship work and not then so employed. Shipbuilding experts, however, know of no more than 50,000 skilled shipbuilders in the whole country; and they know, too, that the construcaion work required by the Government's program calls for 150,000—perhaps 200,000.

Hog Island undertakes to meet its individual problem by making its own skilled craftsmen. Men who are competent in similar lines, together with unskilled workers who want to acquire a shipbuilding trade, are being taught riveting, bolting, erecting, caulking and chipping-every branch of shipbuilding to which the apprentice hand can be turned with the expectation of speedy proficiency. The National Army training idea underlies this emergency labor plan. At Newport News there is a "training camp" for the officers of the new army of skilled labor-a center where picked mechanics are being taught to become instructors in the trade schools that are to teach the novices on the spot in the shipyards. At Hog Island hundreds of men are being paid 30 cents an hour during the six weeks or less required to qualify them for regular jobs in shipbuilding at regular union rates. Throughout the country the call has been issued for men to register for the future, when thousands, instead. of hundreds, will respond, and this one shipbuilding school, with its industrial curriculum embracing a dozen courses, will be graduating 600 men at a time. The wage inducement is there, of course, for any man whose level of intelligence raises him beyond the earning capacity of the mere laborer. His 30 cents per hour while learning compares favorably with the 35 cents paid the common laborer, in view

of the less arduous nature of his occupation, while he is assured that the lapse of no more than a few weeks will promote him to the aristocracy of the trades where high wages prevail and opportunity for further advancement always awaits him.

What an employer can do to put into the men the spirit that shall put those new ships in the water this year is being done on a more than generous scale. It was found that Philadelphia could provide homes for less than half of the number of workers the yard will employ. A housing department, quickly organized, took over the problem and relieved the situation, that became acute with every fresh accession to the Island force, by the construction of barracks capable of accommodating several thousand men, while plans went forward to the building of a whole community of dwellings on the southwestern outskirts of the city proper. Mess halls equal to the feeding of the men during their working hours were erected. Meals that would tempt the appetite of a recluse, while they satisfy the hunger of hustlers, are supplied at 30 cents per manand served, under the system that has been perfected, at the rate of one dinner per second, 60 per minute, 3,600 per hour, in every mess hall. Wherever a man prefers to live on his job and save most of his money, he can have bed and board-three of those good, square meals per day and his sleep on the Island at night-for $1. Just as the Y. M. C. A. has undertaken the task of keeping the men of the National Army, here and abroad, in good spirit, so it has devoted its energies and experience to the men at Hog Island. Four big buildings are coming into service for activities of that sort, and they include gymnasia, recreation and reading rooms, moving pictures and assembly rooms for lectures. The health of the employes is being cared for with every precaution modern sanitary science can provide, from hygiene to hospital service, under the direction of Dr. Thomas Darlington, of New York, who ranks as one of this country's distinguished experts. There is even a Hog

Island newspaper now-they call it the Hog Island News-for the information and bucking up of the fellows on the job. It was in the News that the Pile Driver sang his lusty lay, with its bass note here and there bearing witness to the hold his poesy's feet retain on the sound bedrock of human nature:

"There's the man who builds the stages and the Chippers and the Caulkers,

Every one a skilled performer-better doers, far, than talkers.

And don't forget the Fitters, Electricians and the

rest

And every one believing that the others are a pest!

"But they ain't; you get me, Steven, before this job is done,

We've got to learn the slogan-One for all and all for one.'

And when Hog Island No. 1 goes out the subs to dare,

By God, I'll like the feeling that I helped to put her there."

It is a man's size job they have on their hands at Hog Island.

More conspicuously, perhaps, than any one other war undertaking assumed by the Government, the creation of Hog Island Shipyard looms impressively as a monster work to be fashioned, out of the nothingness previously existent, into a determining factor in the winning of the war-and this as an achievement of the purely industrial forces of our people.

The list of the business organizations-individuals, firms, companies and corporationsselected for the accomplishment of the recordbreaking task becomes, therefore, notable in American industry. Because the names comprised in it represent concerns that have been given the confidence of the United States Government through the Emergency Fleet Corporation and the American International Shipbuilding Corporation, this roster is published:

W

ITH the beginning of the navigation season early in the Spring, the New York State Barge Canal, under construction for the past twelve years at a cost to the State of New York of some $150,000,000, will be opened to traffic along practically its entire mileage. The Erie branch, connecting Troy with Buffalo, is 323 miles in length. The Champlain branch extends for 61 miles; the Oswego branch adds 23 miles; and the Cayuga and Seneca branch stretches 27 miles-in all, a great modern waterway of 434 miles.

The Barge Canal brings into connection the head of tidewater in the Hudson River, at

Troy, with Lake Champlain, Lake Ontario, Cayuga and Seneca Lakes and Lake Erie. It includes a reconstruction, therefore, of the old Erie and Champlain Canals and their principal feeders. Its accomplishment called for the solution of difficulties more numerous and more varied than those which confronted our engineers on the Isthmus of Panama. though the total cost of the Barge Canal is less than was the cost of the Panama Canal, the extent of its usefulness to the body of American people may prove to be even greater.

Al

It was the old Erie Canal that brought the port of New York to the forefront of Ameri

can commerce by making it the tidewater outlet for the products of the rapidly developing interior states. While its service during the past two decades has been of less consequence, because, unlike the competing railroad lines, it was not kept in modern condition, it is replaced now by a thoroughly modern waterway of permanent construction, having locks and dams of massive concrete and steel, and large impounding reservoirs which store up and makes available for the purpose of navigation the abundant rain fall of the Adirondacks. Their dimensions are calculated to pass freight vessels capable of holding 3,000 tons of cargo, which will be transported at minimum expense. Everything, in short, is planned for permanent use and not as any temporary makeshift, as were so many of the earlier waterways, built

when the country was young, when capital was scarce and when engineering knowledge and experience were not as yet adequate for so huge a task.

The locks of the Barge Canal are 310 feet in length, 45 feet in width and 12 feet in depth. They are operated by hydro-electric power generated at the Canal dams, which serve also to light and buoy the property and to provide an excess supply that is available for manufacturing and other purposes, as the State may decide.

The traffic capacity for which the Barge Canal is planned amounts to 10,000,000 tons per season lasting from April until November; but, under pressure of traffic, it is anticipated that this volume may be doubled. Here, then is one inland transportation system, 434 miles