only approximately 2,000,000 tons was available for deep water service in the Atlantic. Those bald tonnage figures show, as nothing else, the huge maritime problem that confronted America.

The United States Shipping Board faced that problem and solved it.

Three days after Henry Howard had been sworn in as Director of Recruiting Service for the Board on May 29, 1917, the first free U. S. navigation school in America was opened with twenty students at Harvard University. The work of organizing additional schools went steadily on through succeeding months until forty-one in all were established on the Atlantic Gulf and Pacific Coasts and on the Great Lakes.

Shipping Board representatives, coming to New Orleans, found the South's ancient seaport peculiarly in a mood to co-operate. The ship building idea had permeated completely New Orleans' commercial life. Just across Lake Pontchartrain from the city, today, the hulls of a fleet of wooden merchant ships exceeding 3,000 tons each are nearing completion. Contracts have already been awarded for 5,000-ton steel freighters.

New Orleans business men had visioned Louisiana pine carrying

navigating and engineering officers and crews for America's merchant marine.

The slogan "Southern Men For Southern Built Ships" was one rallying cry, but above that loomed the loyal belief that here was a chance for New Orleans, one of the Nation's most ancient ports, to give substantial aid to the Nation's most recent maritime enterprise.

The United States Shipping Board Free Navigation School was first established in the offices of the Association of Commerce. Swiftly it outgrew these quarters. The moment these cramped conditions were noticed, Mayor Martin Behrman offered the Shipping Board a complete two-story building belonging

American soldiers and munitions to help win the war.

The city of New Orleans had just completed arrangements for financing a huge ship lock, an industrial basin and canal, in which additional fleets were to be built within the city limits and launched by the banks of the Mississippi River.

So New Orleans turned wholeheartedly to the U. S. Shipping Board's plan of training

to the city. This structure, the old Conveyance and Mortgage Building, was completely renovated under the direction of F. A. Christy, City Architect, and March 1, 1918, saw the school housed in a building of its own. This gave New Orleans the distinction of being the only city in America to devote an entire building to the Shipping Board Navigation School.

Commodore Ernest Lee Jahncke was named by the U. S. Shipping Board as Chief of the Gulf section. For years he has been a leader among Southern yachtsmen. His title comes from his post as Commodore of the Southern Yacht Club, next to the New York Yacht Club the oldest organization of its sort in America. He is a former president of the New Orleans Association of Commerce. Out of Louisiana's waterways the house of Jahncke has made its fortune. Commodore Jahncke has built the great shipyards now in operation at Madisonville. There today four 3,500-ton steamboats built of Southern Pine are on the ways, and are

close to the launching date. But despite the ⚫tremendous pressure of his private interests, Commodore Jahncke has accepted the post of Gulf Section Chief at the nominal salary of $5 per month.

Captain Ernest E. B. Drake, a deep-sea sailor holding a master's certificate in the American Merchant Marine, accepted the post of Director of the U. S. Shipping Board Free Navigation School. His assistant is Walton Smith, another practical deep sea navigator. Those men since the opening of the school have poured a steady stream of qualified navigating officers into the American Merchant Marine. Their record is best summarized by one official report: not one man whom they have sent up from their school for examination before the U. S. Steamboat Inspection Service, which issues licenses, has failed to win his certificate.

In the ancient building at Conti and Royal Streets-part of the Vieux Carre of New Orleans-this navigation school is open from 8 a. m. until 11:30 p. m. daily. There is no set graduation day in that school. Each candidate for Mate's or Master's certificate gets preliminary examination and individual instruction according to his needs. Ship models, compass, sextant, chronometer and patent log -all the equipment of a deep sea navigator is available for instruction at that school. No man enters the school unless he has had two years' deep sea experience. Within six weeks from his entrance, by this intensive system of instruction, each candidate has been thoroughly grounded in the basic principles of deep sea navigation.

room.

The work of the school is not, however, class limited to the Commodore Jahncke's gift to the school is the $60,000 steam yacht "Reverie." This 130-foot craft, moored at the Southern Yacht Club on Lake Pontchartrain, makes regular trips into the Lake with classes from the Navigation School. There, out of sight of land, students of navigation get practical experience, under Captain Drake and Instructor Smith, in "shooting the sun" with sextant, in computing position with chart, chronometer and patent log, and are given exactly the training they need for

their work later while crossing the Atlantic. The number of students enrolled in the school varies. It maintains an average of between forty and fifty men.

While the navigating officers are being trained in downtown New Orleans, American marine engineers are getting their training necessary to obtain certificates as Chief or Assistant Engineers in the Merchant Marine, out at the Engineering School at Tulane University. There, under Professor J. M. Robert, in daily and nightly classes they are put through a course that qualifies them for service in the engine rooms of ships crossing the Atlantic. All men permitted to enter this free engineering school must have had previous experience as firemen on ocean or coastwise steam vessels, as oilers or water tenders, as chief or assistant engineers on lake, bay, sound or river, as locomotive or stationary engineers. Or they must be graduates of nautical engineering schoolships, of technical school mechanical engineering courses, or must have served three years as apprentices to the machinist's trade. Approximately 30 men are constantly studying in these engineering classes in New Orleans.

In addition to these facilities for training men for the Merchant Marine the United States Shipping Board Free Navigation School has been designated officially as a Sea Service Bureau. This means that graduates of the New Orleans school do not find themselves on the pavement hunting a job when their course of training is completed. The moment they are awarded their certificates as Master or Mate, Engineer or Assistant, they are assigned to duty on ships specified by the U. S. Shipping Board.

New Orleans since the earliest history of America has been a great seaport. Millions of tons of world trade have crossed the wharves of the 200-year old city. And now in the war crisis which has made an American Merchant Marine an imperative need if the United States is to play its part, New Orleans is working heart and soul not only to build ships, but to train navigators, engineers and the crews who will officer and man them. This section will do its part.

W

HEN one recalls the several great crises of a war which has been filled with critical periods, one realizes how curiously and how universally the fortunes of our armies depended upon oil. Had it not been for gasoline, the battle of the Marne would have been a French defeat, and Paris would have been besieged within a few days. But when the Germans under Von Kluck were pouring down upon the French capital, General Gallieni rushed hundreds of thousands of French soldiers to the front in taxicabs, enabling General Joffre to turn the tide.

As Petroleum was one of the principal contributions to the vast commercial fabric which was our glory in times of peace, so it has been as necessary to warfare as men or cannon.

Picture oil in wartime. The multitude of factories turning out munitions of war must have fuel and lubricating oils in unusual quantities. Transports carrying our soldiers and war products over the seas are relying more and more on fuel oil. Fuel oil is largely the fuel for the Allied Fleets. Transport lorries carry the soldiers and the supplies to the front. The efficiency of the auto trucks transporting supplies to Verdun, blocked the way to Paris. Had it not been for the gasoline that supplied the submarine chasers, the submarine war would have taken an inestimably greater number of our merchant ships. Had it not been for gasoline, it would not be possible today to operate the new boats that are being used to detect the presence of the U-boats beneath the waves, and finally, gasoline is vital to the vast airplane fleet which the United States will ship to France.

How the war has called for more and more of these supplies is indicated by the fact that in 1913 our exports of gasoline to our present Allies totalled 29,000,000 gallons, and these exports rapidly increased until in 1917 they

totalled 300,000,000 gallons, and in like manner the exports of lubricating oil increased from 103,000,000 gallons in 1913 to over 200,000,000 gallons in 1917. During the war the requirements for naphtha and gasoline have jumped forward with tremendous strides, our total exports of naphtha and gasoline in 1913 being 188,000,000 against over 400,000,000 gallons in 1917. Just as our Allies before our entrance into the war called upon us for vast supplies the consumption of both lubricating oil and gasoline in the United States also mounted at a tremendous rate.

The increasing demands of the Allies, including our own armies, for petroleum, and the diversion of tank tonnage for war purposes has produced many complications in the export oil trade, and the oil industry because of these facts, and because it devoted its united and entire energy to the great task of meeting the needs of the armies overseas, has been forced to curtail the supplies which would ordinarily go to other centers of consumption. Many of these markets had been developed by American. exporters only after years of effort, and if it were not for the causes I have mentioned the necessities of our Allies, the increasing use of all available tonnage for war purposes, and our determination to meet war needs first, these markets would have been amply supplied. The failure to do so was not because there was a normal scarcity, because American oil producers and oil refiners had prepared for a greatly increased export trade, as is shown by the fact that the total production of oil increased from 265,000,000 barrels in 1914 to 328,000,000 barrels in 1917, and also by the fact that the refinery capacity of America increased from 662,755 barrels a day in 1914 to more than 1,265,325 barrels in 1917.*

We had amply provided for the needs of our trade abroad, but the first and unsurmountable *There was consumed last year 380,000,000 barrels of crude oil.

obstacle has been our limited tank steamer mercantile marine which has not been sufficient to transport war requirements, and take care of these markets. Here lies a problem that the war, both before and since America's entry into it, has brought out in sharp relief. In those faraway days when there was no war the exports of oil products were carried almost entirely in tankers of British, German, Dutch and Norweigian registry. America had very few tank steamers flying the American flag. After the outbreak of the European conflict a number of German tank steamers were transferred to the American flag, and these today constitute an important part of the American fleet. A proportion of the British fleet of tank steamers was commandeered by the British Government to transport their requirements. The result was that it has not been possible to supply all the demands of the Allies and also the neutral nations. This situation constitutes a strong argument for the development of the American mercantile marine. Germany's relentless submarine warfare has emphasized this necessity and the time has come when American ship owners must be given an opportunity of competing on equal terms with other nations in the carrying trade. To the fulfillment of this ambition, dear to the heart of every American, the oil trade has already made some substantial contribution. On the outbreak of war, orders for tankers were placed in large volume. The result is that while in 1914 the gross tanker tonnage flying the American flag amounted to 278,753 tons, the building programme has steadily expanded until at the present time our tanker tonnage amounts to 1,106,754 tons. The necessity of maintaining and upbuilding a merchant marine of this kind was recognized by the Shipping Board, with the result that still more tankers are being built, and we shall be better equipped than ever in the present year to fulfill all requirements for the prosecution of the

war.

It is true that our tonnage and the tonnage of the world falls lamentably short and that neutral countries have been deprived of supplies which ordinarily they would have a right to expect. But customers of American manu

facturers in other lands must realize that the United States is not in this war for selfish interests. We are fighting the fight of the neutrals as well as our own. "Business as usual" would have been the softest and easiest path for us, selling our goods to the highest bidders, and seizing every opportunity to build up and consolidate trade relations where war conditions now hamper or bar foreign competition. But the rulers of this country and its business interests have put war first, before all consideration of commercial relations, or friendly claims, or personal or material profits, because the whole fabric of international life demands that this war be won, and when this country declares embargoes, or refuses shipments, it is from no lack of sympathy or disregard of others' rights. It is because those shipments are needed elsewhere, in order to safeguard the common cause, to protect the national life and the freedom of those neutrals at the same time that we are protecting our own.

But again with regard to the domestic situation; as I have said production and refining have steadily increased, that America last year produced more crude oil than ever before in her history, and that her refiners were equipped to handle not only all that oil but also all the oil we could get from Mexico. And I deem it but just to the oil industry to say that this enormous increase in the volume of petroleum products in America has occurred with less increase in prices than has obtained in any other industry in this country. There have been advances, yes, due to the higher cost of materials and of labor, and to stimulate vital production of the necessary crude, but this increase is by no means comparable with the increases that have taken place in almost any other product either for domestic or foreign consumption, and this in face of the unparalleled consumption and demand,

The American oil producers and oil refiners, answering the call of the President, have mobolized their resources as one man to help the Government. In the last year, as I can personally testify, as a Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Oil of the Council of National Defense and then as Chairman of the Petroleum War Service Committee, oil men have