US Presidency
1910

The estimates of the Navy Department are $ 5,000,000 less than the appropriations for the same purpose last year, and included in this is the building program of the same amount as that submitted for your consideration last year. It is merely carrying out the plan of building two battleships a year, with a few needed auxiliary vessels. I earnestly hope that this program will be adopted. ABOLITION OF NAVY-YARDS. The Secretary of the Navy has given personal examination to every navy-yard and has studied the uses of the navy-yards with reference to the necessities of our fleet. With a fleet considerably less than half the size of that of the British navy, we have shipyards more than double the number, and there are several of these shipyards, expensively equipped with modern machinery, which after investigation the Secretary of the Navy believes to be entirely useless for naval purposes. He asks authority to abandon certain of them and to move their machinery to other places where it can be made of use.