Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1918-10-20
WORk NIGhT AND
 DAY IN BUILDING
 SHIPS FOR NAVY Ship Yards at Norfolk and Newport News Turning Out Many Ships.
NOW BUILDING TWO
 LARGEST IN WORLD
Have Always Builded Good Ships and It Will Be
 Continued.

'By ASSOCldIeu PreSS.
 Newport News, Va, Oct. 19,-New ship ways, towering trestles. spread ing shops, fields of steel and the in cessant clamor, day and night, of au- ltomatic riveters, great steam ham, mers and whirring machinery are the symbols of war time shipbuilding here where deep sea craft have been turned out since the sos.
 In this great plant 12,000 men and women are working at top speed. Sliding quietly from the ways, with ,out semblance of the ceremony that attended the launching in the days of peace, ship after ship has been built and hoated only to lose itself in the maze of commerce at this gateway to the Atlantic and to the fields of
 France.
 Whom 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. It will tell how farmer boys from the rolling plains of the west, who had never seen a Iship, and women whose only experi- |ence with metal had been in the handling of pots and pans, answered the call of their country to buAd many of the destroyers which steadily are removing the menace of the sub marine and keeping open the lanes through which the millions of Ameri- can soldiers are going to the West ern Front
 How well these men and women have done their work under the guid-
 ance of skilled workers, is demon strated by the very fact that every destroyer turned out has more than met the eXpress-train speed required under the navy contract. And It IS no secret. at least not here, that the finished ships which have gone into 1 the war zones 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.
 l While all possible energy is going l into the building of the bridge of ships" to France asnd their guardians, |the expansion of this plant into one of the worlds greatest shipyards is planned for after-the-war needs as well as for those of the present. Shop after shop has been built and cranes and other labor saving devices ln- stalled so that when peace comes for eign yards may be met in the great race that is inevitable for the restor-
 ation of destroyed tonnage.
 Even now there are in the building two of the largest shipways in Amer | ica. Here. after the war, will be laid down two of the monster battle cruisers Congress authorized in 1916, designed as the fastest and most powerful 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 more will follow when these are launched A few hundred yards away more fighting ships are building, two and three to one 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 Deeu pTCSSGQ IIltO SclVlNo, PCi iOi mug the delicate work of finishing the myraid 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.
 IA band gives concerts in the yard leach noon.
 Housing has been the greatest prob-
 lem. Two miles beyond the city on
 high bluff overlooking the river is
 rising 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 $25 and $50 day.
 Loyalty is preached in season and
 out.
 In peace times this yard complet-
 ed merchant ships in six months or
 less. but it is bettering that now even
 as it has more than cut in half the
 time for turning out destroyers. Of
 ticials and workmen alike have ever
 before them an bronze tablet set in
 the side of stone column the words
 of the founder of the yard, the late
 Collis P. Huntington, master rail-
 road and shipbuilder in the nations
 pioneer days
 Here we will build good ships; at
 profit if we can, at a loss if we
 must, but always good ships