The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-07-29


 craft. The government, through the Maritime Commission, wanted An drew Jackson Higgins of New Or leans to make Liberty ships-200 of them. He took the contract on March 16 and proposed to build them his own way, on moving as- sembly line principle.
 They sank perhaps $20 million of government money into making 8 start on building the yard. And then on July 18, four months after the contract was let, 1t was can- celed by the government.
 The official explanation is that there isn't enough steel plate to make ships in the yards already producing, so why build more yards. But if that is the case, 1t is almost automatic that the contract should never have been let. Somewhere along the long halls of government, somebody pulled the most colossal, $2O million blunder of this whole cockeyed war.
 JUST ANOTHER
 BLUNDER
 Who the culprits are may be re- vealed through the siftings of the Congressional House and Truman committee hearings, but that's doubt full. Like the under estimates on aluminium, planes and rubber, PAffaire Higgins probably will go down in the history of the war pro- duction effort as just another one of the blunders.
 You can't judge this Higgins case by any normal standards. Andrew Jackson Higgins himself isn't any normal individual. He's real, 200 pounds and more of blood and muscle, yet unreal = something out of a story book He is hard and profane, and in the same breath kindly, gentle. emotional. He has called every admiral in the Navy every name in chief petty officers vocabu- lary and it is said he must have a marine for a secretary. Nobody else could take such dictation.
 Yet when he talks about this shipyard that isn't going to be built, he goes completely Fourth of July and tear jerker.
 When I started this, men phoned me from all over. Men from the Clyde. Men who had been fired for making sugges- tions. These men came to Amer ica and found in the old, con- servatively run shipyards here methods just as mossback as they had been on the Clyde. But we listened to 'em and took their suggestions. And when the order canceling this contract was read to these men, they tried to cheer, but they were cheering through their tears. It made me mad. It made me damn good and mad.
 What are we fighting for, de- mocracy or bureaucracy?
 T wouldn't say this was an at- tack on me. It's an attack on America. An accidental attack, not willful one.
 FOR THEIR
 BOYS"
 "This was to be one gigantic pro- ject run on the ideas of Roosevelt. No discrimination against the Ne gro. It was to have the largest in- dustrial training school in the coun- try. Twelve hundred and fifty whites and 1250 Negroes. We'll keep that going at our own expense.
 T got this land for the Mari time Commission for $100 an acre -1200 acres of land. Neighbor- ing land went for $1,400 an acre, and all that will be lost.
 "When I told them it would take 10000 piles, they said 1t was impossible. We sent men out into the woods. I had been a timberman. We went to these Cajuns. They had big trees, but they wouldn't sell them. But they had boys in the Army. And when we told them that the trees were to go into yards to build ships to haul their boys supplies, they sold. They didn't ask How much? but How litle?' What was the lowest price others had taken? And they sold for that.
 There's just one thing I want to tell you, and I don't think the Maritime Commission will object to it. If this type of thing is go- ing to come up all the time, we're going to have hell of time win ming this war. won't say we're going to lose it. But we'll have a