New-York tribune., 1921-11-20
Ford Prepared
To Beat Navv
Into Flivvers
Acres in Jersey Ready To
BE Used for Dry Dockage
in Scrapping Warcraft,
He Explains to Harding
1000. 600 May Get Jobs
Employment Promised for.
Legions if Muscle Shoals
Bid Is Accepted by U. S.
Special DISPATCH to The Tribune

DETROIT, Nov. 19.--Henry Ford,
who discussed with the President yes
terday his plan for buying and scrap
ping American war vessels if the arnia-
ment reduction proposal is adopted,
revealed, in an interview to-day with
a correspondent Of 'sThc Detroit News"
just how he expects to improve on the
old prophecy of ''beating swords into
plowshares" by melting battleships
into Ford automobiles. He discussed
also his plan for converting the
Muscle Shoals government nitrate
plant into an enterprise that would
employ a million men.
"It will be easy" was the comment
of the Detroit manufacturer-~th the
problem of scrapping the battleshIps,N
after naval experts to whom Secretary
of the Navy DENLY had referred him
had cautioned him that its difficulties
might make the enterprise unprofitabie.'
"They said the ships were very
heavy and cumbersome and that the
cost of operating a dry dock during
the scrapping process might be far
too COSTLY" Mr.. Ford continued.
"I told them I would build my own
dry dock and use it to build merchant
ships afterward. l would hang g crane
over this dry dock and put railroad
tracks alongside of it. 1t is no trick
at all to saw up these great ship plates
all of the steel in ship, in fact
and melt it up into the finest kind of
alloy steel.
"We already have compounded steel
in our plant, an inch-thick piece of
which required 10000 pounds pull to
break. A similar piece of armor plate
steel will withstand only about 10000
pounds.
Ready to Build Plants
president Harding suggested that
we could not get the battleships to
| have an eighty-acre tract on the
New Jersey shore and other sites on
the coast available for the job, and
that We have plants in Manchester and
Cork where this steel could be util-
lied.
why, do sou know that we picked
up enough rough steel scrap rails, old
car trucks and the like on the De-
troit, Toledo & Ironton Railroad to
almost pay for it. We melted most
of it up, although some of the rails
we shipped up to the upper peninsula
fora use in our logging and mining
operations
u am indeed in earnest about the
battleships. If they will turn them
over to us We will put all of the mate
rails in them to good use and we will
employ a whole lot of men tearing
them to pieces in the bargain.
IF you stop building battleships and
reduce the number of ships in opera
tion you will throw a whole lot of
men out of jobs. That is the most
serious problem that disarmament
presents. The governments have got
to find a way to employ these men; that
q hot {rvy 10 Il nj
Gle Shoals-that is, supply lot of men
with useful employment. Muscle
Shoals, fully developed, will itself put
100000 to work"
With Herbert Hoover, Mr.. Ford and
his engineers discussed the details of
the Muscle Shoals project. Mr.. Hoover
sought to persuade Mr.. Ford to in
crease his offer for the property, but
without success. The one important
change in the proposal was an offer Of
Mr. Ford to complete the dams at cost
for the government.
Differences Over Estimate
The discussion chiefly reyolved
around the variations in estimates of
the Ford engineers and the army en-
gineers of the cost of completing the
work. The Ford estimate Is approxi-
mately S40,000,0000, whereas the gov
arnment estimates range as high as
S6O,O00,000. The difference, however,
1t is agreed, is largely due to variation
in prices of materials and labor at the
time the two estimates were made.
Mr.. Ford proposed to contribute
s2S,000,0o0 of the work. The remaining
s12,000,000 of The cost, as he estimates
it, would be made up to the government
by the Improvement in navigation of
the Tennessee River, which the com
pletion of the dam would effect. On
three different occasions the army en-