New-York tribune., 1918-03-05

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Titanic sculpture. Here men become sc
giants by means of their machines and
play with mile and half of land as an ar
tst shapes the plastic clay. Not content with
the material at hand, they supplement it
with and manufactured material drawn
from continent.
Here the island is shovellcd away bv tho
magic of the steam shovel; there it is n;led
up by the necromancy of the suction dredpe
That makes the waters OF the river remoye
their own foundations. Here, there and
everywhere the island is gouged and slashed
as the machines that will not be denied
shape 1t and reshape it. And even as the
very surface and form of the island are
changed while you watch, structures innu
'merable arise at every turn. Into the island
flows Il stream of material that never con-
tains less than 1000 cars and its daily dis.
charge is from 200 to 400 carloads. Arrived
1T disappears the river in the desert
Feeding this disappearing stream are more
IMAM 4,oO0 factories throughout the land
America Answering Bluff
Hog Island is on the Delaware, but it is
also all over America. 1t is America !,
mountain and valley, forest and plain. citv
and country, turned to shipbuildng II is
|
IN this tremendous magniicaton of men
II the mass into an industrial Hercules the
individual disappears No man thinks Of
himself. Everybody thinks of "us." Tho
work, the great work, all converging on and
uniting into ships, obsesses and possesses all
Men are killed and wounded, and the sur.
VlVors scarcely look up as the shriekine ann.
bulance lushes to the hospital. A poor devil
VINO has stolen some petty thing is examined
fEo r,,I 4
officers bring in Mr.. -, who descends from,
his lordly limousine, apologetcally repeating
as II 1t were some magic formula, Il am
MR.. , am director of the PENNSYLVANIA
1'ailfoad. And nobody pays any more atten-
t'oh TO the magnate caught without pass
than to the thief caught with the goods
"hat IS one thief or one railway director
"neh 22'ooo men are on the iob-the bio
'op OF the war? On with the work.
Inc front line of Hog Island is the harbor
line. There the ships to be will be harm
Back of that line all these thousand build'
lngs, these miles and miles of planked roads.
these endless barracks for the men, these
mess nails, these storehouses, these ware
houses, these hospitals, these fire halls. these
waterworks, these sewers these air com
pressors, these administration buildings these
shops and forges, these lumber yards these
countless miles OF railway tracks, these mas
built and building to serve 1.-THE front line
SO vast and so complex is this work of prep
;tration that men get lost in it as in great
city. SVpcrlmposed on Manhattan Island Hog
Island would reach from the Battery to
Eighth Street. Scarcely dozen men on the
island know or comprehend it, Like the war
itself, it has surpassed human understanding.
Unless the visibility is exceptional you can
not see from one end of the island to the
oil E,,i1C ,
orderly general plan, though the plan itself
may be chopped and sliced to suit exigencies.
Everything is on the line OF progress and de
velopment toward the shipways. The arrow $
OF direction all point to the water-to the
ocean and beyond. From the moment a car
load OF material enters the yard it moves
steadily and inevitably to the front.
Building City First
1t is hard to understand that to build ships
you first must build city-a city now of
$4,000 men in the day time, and that may vet
shelter $4,000. To cinch the facts. the
stupendous facts, must come to figures
Ii took one great American shipyard seven
teen years to build 200 ships. Hog Island is
planned to build the same number in seven
teen months. 1t requires 10000 piles. 100
miles of conduits, enough insulated able
and wire TO reach from Portland, Ore to
Richmond, Va; 11000O,000 feet of lumber;
as much "ater Minneapolis; as much
electric power Providence; scventy-tive
miles of standard gauge railroad. OF which
SIX miles are passenger tracks; 100000
yards OF dredging, 100000 yards of excava-
ton, 125 piiedrivers, twenty locomotives,
500 freight cars, fifty passenger cars, coo
motors, 400 hoists, 200 autos and motor
trucks, hundreds of teams, 600 policemen,
twenty doctors, eighty tiremen. thousand
office peoole-and so 1 might go on for
columns.
Now, imagine all this equipment all this
army of workers, all this buildings all this
machinery )ulsating with activity, some parts
never pausing day night, driving on
through ice and cold, mud and snow, rain
end slcet, stopping for no obstacle, human
or elemental Imagine it against skyline
of derrick and pile driver towers innumer
able, fill the air to deafness with the boom
OF blasts, the roar OF engines, the shreks
OF whistles, the rumbling of trains the
putings of steam engines, the chugging Of
gas engines, the thudding of pile hammers,
the rafting and splashing of the dredges.
the rat-tat OF the riveters, and the loud
shouts and shril whistles Of command.
Then look up at the serenely waving flag
higher in the air than all else here.
What do they do WITH all this money
this $500 100000?
Few Good German Tvoons in Russia