The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-03-28
NAVAL ADVISORY BOARD
 TO MOBILIZE INDUSTRY
 OF U. s. IN PEACE TIME
Practical Men Special Committee Make Comprehen- sive Plan For Preparedness In Supply Iine-Adver- tising Clubs Will Go operate in Launching Plan

an organization made up of the best
 technical and business brains of the
 country, and that organization will
 work along business lines with strictly
 business methods. I think it reasona@ | b1e to say that this is a movement
 perhaps unique in the history of na-
 tional governments, and one geared
 up to the highest standards of twen- 1 tfeth century efficiency.
 [ cit is vita11y necessary that Ameri- i can industry be made aware of the
 part it must play in the national de- 1 fense. Our whole conception of war fare has been changed almost over
 night. Our military heads at Wash ington are largely, of course, graduates
 of the very best technical schools, have | bene taught the profession of fighting, l and are masters of that profession. As
 members of the Naval consulting
 Board, we are unable. to tell these men how to do their work. But while
 these departmental heads have lived
 with military problems all their adult
 years, we on the other hand have slept
 and eaten and lived with the indus
 trial problems of the country. The
 1.-two questions are wholly distinct, and
 the masters of one cannot possibly be
 the masters of the other. We are l confronted then with the necessity of 1 inter1ocking these two vast elements
 of our national life into a great work 1 l fense. It is that which we are about l to do.
 tHThe European war has driven
 home to, us that battles are now won 1 not alone by fighting men but my the
 fighting industries of nation. It has all come down to which country can
 fastest and longest supply the muni- tions of war to the men on the fighting line. It has come down to the ques-
 ton of which country can fastest and
 in the greatest quantity supply shells
 to the guns-to speak of only one-iten l of modern, warfare. It has come even to the point, over sea, where the
 women of all c1asses--the wives and 1 daughters of all c1asses-are going 1 into the mills and factories at Satur day noon and working in seven hour shifts until midnight of Sunday, in | order that the mills may not be closed ] down .during the day,~in accordance
 with the agreement made by organlzed l labor yas to the period of rest.
 s.Now, when warfare gets down to 1 this basis, it becomes not merely question of the ability of army and
 navy heads, there is brought into ae-
 ton every bit of industrial brains of a country in arms. We here in America
 must organize, and organize from now | on, behind the men of the army and navy We must make them. sure that they have the full and intelligent sup port of American industry, and to do
 this we must work in time of peace and not wait until the eleventh hour I strikes.
 ..In appr roach1ng the entire broad
 problem, of industrial preparedness, special p1eadings in oratory or in print are not sufficient. There must be plan, and it is very definite practical plan on which this committee has been engaged for the past three months and which is even now under way. seThere are three different initial steps The first is to find out what American. industry can actually pro duce in munitions of war. The second l is to apply that knowledge in a prac- | ticaI way which will put the plants of l this country into the service of the l government behind the army and navy The third step is to form such an organization of skilled labor as will not get off the job when war comes, that will not allow skilled i workers to go to the front only to be pulled back later, more or less denor- aIized, to tasks from which they
 should never have been taken. It is now well known that allowing skilled
 labor to enlist at the outbreak of hos tilities created a very serious state of affairs in the factories of European countries.
 N.'In the first step. that of making
 the industrial inventory, we cannot de-
 pend on any small corps of men or
 board. The work must be done by i the men who themselves have deveI- l ed the industries of the country. In short, we must enroll and we are pro- ceeding to, enroll, American industry
 at it's source. We have turned to the
 engineers of America to take up this
 work. It is they who in the event of
 war must stand behind the industries and we have called them into service 1 in time of peace. Briefly, in every 1 state of the union, a, board of five df-
 rectors has been formed, each director | being a leading business engineer of | his state, familiar with his states fac | tories, mills and mines. These five
 men are chosen. one each from five great technical societies, the American 1 Society of Civil Engineers, the American Institute of Mining En- l gineers, the American Society of Me chanica1 Engineers, the American In- stitute of Electrical Engineers and the
 Anerican< Chemical Society which have themselves, with the only stand ard that of efficiency and integrity, selected these directors, who receive appointment at the hands of the Sec
 retary of the Navy. This gives us, in- FcIuding Alaska, five men each, in all 49 working boards of 245 engineers Eof the highest standing, and under them will work the more than 30, 900 engineers belong to the five great so- cieties, all of these men trained as
 only American engineers earef trained. All the state directors, from Maine to
 Alaska, and from Louisiana to Cali
 fornia, have accepted their nomina- ton. The engineers are entering upon their work in the most serious and concentrated frame of mind.
 t"The methods of procedure will be l that under, the direction of this com l in oh9 a Of W. U
 ". S. Gifford-who, as Chief Statisti- elan of the American Telephone and
 Telegraph Company is probably the leading business statistician in. the country trained to national perspec-