The National tribune., 1902-10-30
NOT WORKING WELL

I ApChc AS.t, iOEthCes camp OtO, duu OlucE
places of rebel torture.
NOT WORKING WELL.
The long fight between the .line and
staff in the Navy-between the Surgeons
Engineers and Paymasters. to be put on
the same footing as the line officers. re-
suited in the Engineer Corps being abolish
ed-all the Engineers being absorbed into
the line and all the line being required to
be qualified Engineers, so that they could
be assigned to the management of the en-
gine, the same as TO any other duty about
the ship. In some respects this would
seem sensible arrangement, and in har-
mOny with the practice of the army, where
any officer is subject to assignment to
duty as Quartermaster, COmmissary, Ord
nance Officer, Typographical Engineer,
Judge Advocate, etc, etc. Rear-Admiral
Geo. w. Melville, Chief OF the Bureau of
Steam Engineering, enters vigorous pro-
test against the way in which this law is
being carried out. He complains that the
officers will not attend to their engineering
duties, but leave them to the Warrant Ma
chinists, who are enlisted men, and who,
while competent for practical work, do
not understand the theoretical workings of
the engines. The Admiral says:
"The present condition of affairs can
not and should not be permitted to con-
tinue. The Navy Department and the
Congress may be spurred to action from
strong influences without the service un-
less greater proportion of the commits
stoned personnel is assigned to engineer
ing duties. As the engineering profession
wonld it not be wise to do the work of
STRENGTHENING the service along engineer
Ing lines within the naval organization
rather than to have the Congress again
take up the matter, when the formation of
la separate corps of naval engineers,
endowed with military rank and authority,
will not only be n possibility, but a decided
pre- bability!
ut has been because the belief prevails
in some quarters that the experience of a
single cruise in the engine room will lit
junior officers for the duty of a Chief En-
gineer, and that the practical duties at sea
of the old Engineer officers can be taken
up by the warrant machinists, that there
has been retrogressiOn in the engineering
efficiency of the navy. This retrOgression
will not cease until at least One-fifth of
the 1900 commissioned officers, midship-
men and warrant officers are assigned to
engineering duty.
| lulS Ie5lSldtlOH dSSillS tne traultlOHS
of the service, and it is not surprising that
opposition developed when it was pre-
sumed that vested rights had been en-
crOached upon. This opposition was pow
erless in its appeal to Congress to reject
the measure. 1t commanded greater
strength in the naval service, and it is
this influence which stands in the way of
a liberal and generous enforcement Of the
unwritten but well-understOod provisions
of the personnel law. If the law is ad-
ministered with desire to make it a suc-
cess it will, beyond a doubt, give us the
most efficient navy in the world. 1t must
however, be administered in away that
will prevent junior officers from showing a
decided preference for deck duty, and this
result can in great part be secured by re-
Ifusing to promote those who have not had
actual and continuous experience in the
engine room, and whose semi-annual re-
ports as to fitness do not show that they
have been jealous and proficient in the per-
fOrmance of engineering duty
This is a very serious matter, and de-
mands the most strenuous attention Of
the Secretary of the Navy and of Congress.
1t will be folly for us to go on building
enormously costly ships. and then put
them in the charge of officers too dainty
or too lazy to thoroughly understand them
and assiduously care for them. That they
are indisposed to do this now is partly due
to vicious traditions inherited from the
English Navy and cultivated at Annapolis.
These traditions encourage the belief that
it is not necessary for an officer to really
know anything beyond the habit of COM
mand-that he can get a lower order Of
beings to think for him, and do whatever
| is necessary. 1t is the old story that Nc
Caulay tells of the English Navy, that its
officers were gentlemen who were not
Sailors" while tile real work was done by
sailors who were not gentlemen" This
will not do in the present day, when the
life of the ship is in her engines, and when
the science is in such high state that
none but. the best trained, alert men can
be trusted to manage ships motive
power, and get out of it all that is possi-
BILE. If the line officers are too dainty to
put on greasy over-alls and personally at
tend to the working of their engines and
devote themselves to the laborious study
of the possibilities of machinery, it will
be necessary, as Admiral Melville says, to
reconstruct corps which will have q
proper pride in its work. This brings up
again the ugly thought suggested in Ad-
miral Simpsons letter in regard to the
promotion of a gunner, that the officers
of the American Navy are getting too fine
for anything but 5 o'clock teas.
Admiral Melville makes a number of
recommendations, among which are the es-
Establishment at the Naval Academy of an
engineering experimental laboratory; the
establishment at the Naval Academy of
la postgraduate course in engineering; the
detail Of junior officer of the line as an
understudy and assistant to every officer
on shore doing engineering duty only; that
the junior officers of the line be placed in
charge of the machinery of all the smaller
vessels; that a general order be issued of
such emphatic nature that the junior Off
GERS Of the line will thoroughly appreciate
that promotion will be denied them if
! they have not performed duty in the en-
! gine room or have not sought work of this
character; that graduates. of archaeological
colleges be permitted by law to compete
for acting commissions in the service, and
that 100 more Warrant. Maehinists be ap-
pointed.
AN innovation has been made in the
labor system of Louisiana, by the impor-
tation of several thousand Mexicans to