Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1918-10-16
INDUSTRY IS ONE
|NCESSANT WH|Rl
ShipbuiIders at Top Speed
Day and Night at Newport
News Yard.
MANY WOMAN employees

BY the Associated Press.
NEWPORT NEWS, Va, October 16.-
New shipways. towering trestles,
spreading shops, fields of steel and
the incessant clamor, day and night
OF automatic riveters, great steam
hammers and whirring machinery are
the symbols Of wartime shipbuilding
here, where deep sea craft have been
turned out since the sos.
In this great plant $4,000 men and
women are working at top speed. Slid
ing quietly from the ways. without
semblance of the ceremony that at
tended iaunchings in the days of
peace, ship after ship has been built
and f1oated only to lose itself in the
maze of commerce at this gateway to
the Atlantic and to the fields of
France.
When the wartime history of the
Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry
Dock Company is written. 1t will be
an interesting chapter in the romance
OF the destroyer, 1t will tell how
farmer boys from the rolling plains of
the west, who had never seen ship,
and women whose only experience
of pots and pans, answered the call of
their country to build many of the de-
stroyers which steadily are removing
the menace of the submarine and
keeping open the lanes through which
the millions of American soldiers are
going to the western front.
All Meet Speed Test.
How well these men and women
ho hai rn,.ly
guidance of skilled workers is DEM
onstrated by the fact that every de-
stroyer turned out has more than met
the express-train speed required I'M
der the Navy contract. And it is no
secret, at least not here, that the
the war zone have given a good ac-
count of themselves even as the Fan
ming and other pre-war products of
this yard have added new laurels to
American naval records.
While all possible energy is going
into the building Of the bridge of
ships" to France and their guardians,
the expansion of this plant into one
of the worlds greatest shipyards is
planned for after-the-war needs as
we'll as for those of the present. Shop
after shop has been built and cranes
and othei labor-saving devices in
stalled so that when peace comes
foreign yards may be met in the great
race that is inevitable for the restora-
ton of destroyed tonnage.
Two of Largest shipways in o. S.
Even now there are in the building
two of the largest shipways in Amer
lea. Here. after the war, will be laid
down two of the monster battle
| cruisers Congress authorized in 1916,
designed as the fastest and most pow
erful ships Of their type on the sea.
Nearby these new ways four emer-
gency ways have been thrown up on
ground made" within the year. On
| these emergency ways naval vessels
are building, and moro will follow
| WREN these are launched. A few hun
dred yards away more fighting ships
set of ways. On still other stocks
! merchant ships and other craft are
being put together.
| Turbines largely have supplanted
the old-style reciprocal drive engine
and it is on these that women have
| the delicate work Of finishing the
| myriad brass paddles against which
| the steam strikes to revolve the tur-
bine drum. much as water runs a mill
wheel.
In the yard dispensary, where men
| who are injured are treated, nurses
and doctors are constantly on duty.
| A band gives concerts in the yard
| each noon.
Housing has been the greatest prob
lem. Two miles beyond the city, on
! high bluff overlooking the river, is
rising a new city, to be peopled ex-
| clusively by shipyard workers. High
wages are the rule. as at other yards,
with riveterS many of them negroes,
| making as high as SIS and $50 a day.
Loyalty is preached in season and out.
In peace times this yard completed
merchant ships in six months or less,
but it is lettering that now even. as
it has more than cut in half the time
for turning out destroyers. Officials
and workmen alike have ever before
them on a bronze tablet set in the
side of stone column the words of
| the founder of the yard, the late Coils
P. Huntington, master railroad and
shipbuiider in the nations pioneer
days:
Here we will build good ships-at a
profit if we can. at a loss if we must,
but always good ships"