Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1918-06-04

When we remember the anxiety which even the
most sanguine-tempered of felt over the tonnage
situation a year ago. the present rate of ship pro-
duction appears doubly heartening and significant.
May. 1917, like the months Immediately preceding,
was a season of fearful submarine havoc. The
Allies were losing vessels by week the Brit
isk yards for all their trojan industry, were not
keeping construction anywhere apace with
snkings; and the American shipbuiIding facilities
were Just becoming fairly organized. 1t was pain
fully evident that if the trend continued long
changed the threats of Prussian piracy would have
a prospect of fuhlIment. Statisticians calculated
time in the not extremely distant future when
Allied tonnage would have shrunk to a point not
only of grave danger but of desperate peril These
apprehensions ghtened, Of course, by the hope
of a gradually quickened progress in combating the
U-boats and in turning out ships. But few per-
sons then would have ventured to predict progress
so remarkable as that which now witness.
The United States is producing the equivalent of
one ten-thousand-ton ship every twenty-four hours
or approximately three hundred thousand tons a
month. The May Iaunchings of wooden vessels
alone averaged a day. In the week ended May
IS, ten steel ships, aggregating ftyeight thousand
eight hundred and fifty TONS delivered
pete and ready for operation; and the week before
saw the delivery of eight steel ships aggregatlng
about fifty thousand tons. These the results of
the extensive and thoroughgoing preparation with
which certain headlong critics of the Government
grew so rawly impatient. Things working out
as thoughtful observers foresaw; our shipbuilding
machinery, unexampled in its vastness, having
got fairly adjusted and in swing is developing
derfuI speed, power and efficiency. But what
are doing is merely beginning to what we
shall be doing six months and year hence. The
expansion of facilities goes steadily Director
General Schwab recently announced agreement
under which the shpbuiIding companies the
Great Lakes will construct for 1919 delivery to
the Government one hundred and thirty vessels
averaging forty-two hundred tons each On top of
this comes news of greatly enlarged plans for con-
structing concrete ships the feasibility of which has
been so happily demonstrated. Contracts for
eighteen of these ships already have been let, and
hfty-eight more, it is announced, will be ordered
as soon as sites for Government yards be
chosen
The cheering significance of these results and
well-grOunded plans in their relation to the vital
problems of the war cannot be oyerestimated.
From time to time We speak of this, that and the
other thing being peculiarly essential to the win
ming Of the war; food, munitions. money and men
each is emphasized all-impOrtant factor.
And So indeed, each is; certainly a failure in the
supply of any one OF them would mean the losing
of the war IL is obvious, however, that no album
dance however great. of food, munitions or men
would avail if we unable to pour them into
the battles wavering scales What really counts is
not how much power have on this side of the
Atlantic but how we exerting the other side.
This is simply another way of saying what Premier
Lloyd George said many months ago: Tonnage will
win the war" The transportation Of our expedf-
tionarv forces of whom, we are told, there soon
will be almost a million in France, is of itself
prodigious task But taking them across is only the
beginning There remains the enormous and never
ceasng labor of supplying their hundreds of neces-
stiles And if this labor seems enormous now, what
will II be when we have three million or five million
men "over there?' Obviously the tonnage need is
one of the over-reaching and endless problems Of
the war That we have made so substantial be-
ginning in serving that need is a prime assurance
of ultimate victory