Evening journal., 1918-09-06

shipping requirements for com
merce with South America.
The United States will be pre-
pared to furnish that commerce
with an ocean delivery service Of
100000 deadweight tons.
The installation recently of d.
rect steamship line between New
York and Chile and on the fastest
time schedule ever known in the
trade with the west coast of South
America is a forerunner of the kind
of service the Shipping Board plans
to give from its fleet.
Great International Delivery Service
1--WE are rapidly building the me-
chanical equipment for regular
steamship lines all over the world"
10 quote Chairman Hurley again.
''The fast troop ship can be convert
ed for combined passenger and car
go service and placed on regular
lines, reaching the whole of Central
America, South America, the Pa
| cific and the British colonies. We
shall undoubtedly have our own
lines TO Great Britain, European
and Mediterranean ports. Our re-
frigerator ships, now carrying meat
and dairy products to feed the ale
lies, will carry meat, fruit, butter.
eggs and perishables to other coun-
tries. Our cargo ships can be or
ganized on the triangular system.
which has made British and German
shipping profitable
''TO keep this great new merchant
marine busy we must have a radic,s
change in American business think
ing. Every manufacturer and trad
er in the United States, every bank
er, farmer, miner and consumer,
must begin to think now about
American merchant ships as a great
international delivery service. No
longer must we be content to let
our railroads stop at the ocean.
They must be extended to reach
clear around the globe"
There is another problem, that Of
completed. When one of this vast
feet of ships takes the water the
time can be measured in weeks to
her first voyage. With hundreds of
these maiden voyages at hand, the
question of crews becomes the next
great consideration in the program
of bridging the Atlantic with Amer
lean vessels.
But the work of preparing the
vast fleet for sea service has been
no more left to chance than the
building itself. For more than a
year the Shipping Board has been
a training system by
which skilled Americans, sailors
and engineers, could be trained to
serve as officers on merchant ships,
and novices. from factory and farm,
could be given their first steps to-
ward service on deck and in engine
room in the crews of those ships.
Training 5000 Men a Month.
Through this system the Shipping
Board is providing young, patriotic,
lrdent Americans at the rate Of
more than 5000 men a month for
ervice on the ships that Hurley and
Schwab build.
A squadron of training ships is
on the Atlantic, with a
ase at Boston, to drill these sea-
,oing patriots; another on the Pa
itic, with bases at San Francisco
nd Seattle, and ship has been au-
horized by the Board for both the
iulf and the Great Lakes, to be
ased at New Orleans and Cleve-
md respectively.
In referring recently 10 the train
lg system of the Shipping Board,
hartman Hurley stated that it was
ne ambition of himself and his col
,agues TO place 100 per cent.
merican" crews on the new ves-
lis turned out for the National
eet.
'There was a time" he said, mot
very remote, when many people
fought we were no longer a sea-
)ing people; that our glory on the
as departed with the square rig.
IT'S. Those people were wrong.
e are a seagoing people. More
an 1000 experienced men have
zen licensed as merchant officers
nee we went into the war. Now
ON every state in the Union young
en- are coming forward through
e recruiting service of the United
ates Shipping Board and offering
for service in the crews
our new American ships.