Part 5 (1/2)

[Footnote 8: In 1918 the average number of days worked by each miner in the bituminous fields was greater by twelve than that of 1917, and by twenty-five than that of 1916. During the half-year period from April to September, 1918, bituminous production was twelve per cent greater than in the corresponding period of the previous year, which had itself established a record, despite the decrease in the number of mine workers.]

Similar increase in the production and saving of oil was accomplished.

The oil-burning vessels of the allied navies and merchant marines, the motor transport service of the armies, all made this necessary. In 1918 the production of oil in the United States was fourteen per cent greater than in 1914. In response to an urgent cable from Marshal Foch, which ran: ”If you don't keep up your petrol supply we shall lose the war,” a series of ”gasless Sundays” was suggested. For nearly two months, merely at the request of the Fuel Administration and without any compulsion except that arising from public opinion, Sunday motoring was practically abandoned. That most crowded of motor thoroughfares, the Boston Post Road from New York to Stamford, might have served as playground for a kindergarten. The estimated saving of gasoline amounted to a million barrels: about four per cent of the gasoline sent abroad in 1918 was provided by the gasless Sundays.

Credit must be given the Fuel Administration for the large measure of success which it finally secured. It was slow in its early organization and at first failed to make full use of the volunteer committees of coal operators and labor representatives who offered their a.s.sistance and whose experience qualified them to give invaluable advice. But Garfield showed his capacity for learning the basic facts of the situation, and ultimately chose strong advisers. When he entered upon his duties he found the crisis so far advanced that it could not be immediately solved.

Furthermore, in a situation which demanded the closest cooperation between the Fuel and the Railroad Administration, he did not always receive the a.s.sistance from the latter which he had a right to expect.

As a war measure, the temporary nationalization of the railroads was probably necessary. Whatever the ultimate advantages of private owners.h.i.+p and the system of compet.i.tion, during the period of military necessity perfect coordination was essential. Railroad facilities could not be improved because new equipment, so far as it could be manufactured, had to be sent abroad; the only solution of the problem of congestion seemed to be an improvement of service. During the first nine months after the declaration of war a notable increase in the amount of freight carried was effected; nevertheless, as winter approached, it became obvious that the roads were not operating as a unit and could not carry the load demanded of them. Hence resulted the appointment of McAdoo in December, 1917, as Director-General, with power to operate all the railroads as a single line.

During the spring of 1918 the Administration gradually overcame the worst of the transportation problems. To the presidents and management of the various railroads must go the chief share of credit for the successful accomplishment of this t.i.tanic task. Despite their distrust of McAdoo and their objections to his methods, they cooperated loyally with the Railroad Administration in putting through the necessary measures of coordination and in the elimination of the worst features of the former compet.i.tive system. They adopted a permit system which prevented the loading of freight unless it could be unloaded at its destination; they insisted upon more rapid unloading of cars; they consolidated terminals to facilitate the handling of cars; they curtailed circuitous routing of freight; they reduced the use of Pullman cars for pa.s.senger service. As a result, after May, 1918, congestion was diminished and during the summer was no longer acute. This was accomplished despite the number of troops moved, amounting during the first ten months of 1918 to six and a half millions. In addition the railroads carried large quant.i.ties of food, munitions, building materials for cantonments, and other supplies, most of which converged upon eastern cities and ports. The increase in the number of grain-carrying cars alone, from July to November, was 135,000 over the same period of the previous year.

Unquestionably the Government's administration of the railroads has a darker side. Complaints were frequent that the Railroad Administration sacrificed other interests for its own advantage. The future of the roads was said not to be carefully safeguarded, and equipment and rolling stock mishandled and allowed to deteriorate. Above all, at the moment when it was quite as essential to preserve the morale of labor on the home front as that of the troops in France, McAdoo made concessions to labor that were more apt to destroy discipline and _esprit de corps_ than to maintain them. The authority given for the unionization of railroad employees, the stopping of piecework, the creation of shop committees, weakened the control of the foremen and led to a loss of shop efficiency which has been estimated at thirty per cent. Government control was necessary, but in the form in which it came it proved costly.

During the months when manufacturing plants were built and their output speeded up, when fuel and food were being produced in growing amounts, when the stalled freight trains were being disentangled, there was unceasing call for ocean-going tonnage. Food and war materials would be of little use unless the United States had the s.h.i.+ps in which to transport them across the Atlantic. The Allies sorely needed American help to replace the tonnage sunk by German submarines; during some months, Allied s.h.i.+pping was being destroyed at the rate of six million tons a year. Furthermore if an effective military force were to be transported to France, according to the plans that germinated in the summer of 1917, there would be need of every possible cubic inch of tonnage. The entire military situation hinged upon the s.h.i.+pping problem.

Yet when the United States joined in war on Germany there was not a s.h.i.+pyard in the country which would accept a new order; every inch of available s.p.a.ce was taken by the navy or private business.

In September, 1916, the United States s.h.i.+pping Board had been organized to operate the Emergency Fleet Corporation, which had been set up primarily to develop trade with South America. This body now prepared a gigantic programme of s.h.i.+pbuilding, which expanded as the need for tonnage became more evident. By November 15, 1917, the Board planned for 1200 s.h.i.+ps with dead weight tonnage of seven and a half millions. The difficulties of building new yards, of collecting trained workmen and technicians were undoubtedly great, but they might have been overcome more easily had not unfortunate differences developed between William Denman, the chairman of the Board, who advocated wooden s.h.i.+ps, and General George W. Goethals, the head of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, who depended upon steel construction. The differences led to the resignation of both and continued disorganization hampered the rapid fulfillment of the programme Edward N. Hurley became chairman of the s.h.i.+pping Board, but it was not until the spring of 1918, when Charles M.

Schwab of the Bethlehem Steel Company was put in charge of the Emergency Fleet Corporation as Director General of s.h.i.+pbuilding, that public confidence in ultimate success seemed justified.

Much of the work accomplished during the latter days of the war was spectacular. Waste lands along the Delaware overgrown with weeds were transformed within a year into a s.h.i.+pyard with twenty-eight ways, a s.h.i.+p under construction on each one, with a record of fourteen s.h.i.+ps already launched. The spirit of the workmen was voiced by the placard that hung above the bulletin board announcing daily progress, which proclaimed, ”Three s.h.i.+ps a week or bust.” The Hog Island yards near Philadelphia and the Fore River yards in Ma.s.sachusetts became great cities with docks, sidings, shops, offices, and huge stacks of building materials. Existing yards, such as those on the Great Lakes, were enlarged so that in fourteen months they sent to the ocean a fleet of 181 steel vessels. The new s.h.i.+ps were standardized and built on the ”fabricated” system, which provided for the manufacture of the various parts in different factories and their a.s.sembling at the s.h.i.+pyards. In a single day, July 4, 1918, there were launched in American s.h.i.+pyards ninety-five vessels, with a dead weight tonnage of 474,464. In one of the Great Lakes yards a 5500 ton steel freighter was launched seventeen days after the keel was laid, and seventeen days later was delivered to the s.h.i.+pping Board, complete and ready for service.

This work was not accomplished without tremendous expenditure and much waste. The s.h.i.+pping Board was careless in its financial management and unwise in many of its methods. By introducing the cost plus system in the letting of contracts it fostered extravagance and waste and increased and intensified the industrial evils that had resulted from its operation in the building of army cantonments. The contractors received the cost of construction plus a percentage commission; obviously they had no incentive to economize; the greater the expense the larger their commission. Hence they willingly paid exorbitant prices for materials and agreed to ”fancy”

wages. Not merely was the expense of securing the necessary tonnage multiplied, but the cost of materials and labor in all other industries was seriously enhanced. The high wages paid tended to destroy the patriotic spirit of the s.h.i.+pworkers, who were enticed by greed rather than by the glory of service. The effect on drafted soldiers was bound to be unfortunate, for they could not but realize the injustice of a system which gave them low pay for risking their lives, while their friends in the s.h.i.+pyards received fabulous wages. Such aspects of the early days of the s.h.i.+pping Board were ruthlessly reformed by Schwab when he took control of the Emergency Fleet Corporation. Appealing to the patriotism of the workers he reduced costs and increased efficiency, according to some critics, by thirty per cent, according to others, by no less than one hundred and ten per cent.

By September, 1918, the s.h.i.+pping Board had brought under its jurisdiction 2600 vessels with a total dead weight tonnage of more than ten millions.

Of this fleet, sixteen per cent had been built by the Emergency Fleet Corporation. The remainder was represented by s.h.i.+ps which the Board had requisitioned when America entered the war, by the s.h.i.+ps of Allied and neutral countries which had been purchased and chartered, and by interned enemy s.h.i.+ps which had been seized. The last-named were damaged by their crews at the time of the declaration of war, but were fitted for service with little delay by a new process of electric welding. Such German boats as the _Vaterland_, rechristened the _Leviathan_, and the _George Was.h.i.+ngton_, together with smaller s.h.i.+ps, furnished half a million tons of German cargo-s.p.a.ce. The s.h.i.+ps which transported American soldiers were not chiefly provided by the s.h.i.+pping Board, more than fifty per cent being represented by boats borrowed from Great Britain.[9]

[Footnote 9: In the last six months of the war over 1,500,000 men were carried abroad as follows: 44 per cent in United States s.h.i.+ps 51 per cent in British s.h.i.+ps 3 per cent in Italian s.h.i.+ps 2 per cent in French s.h.i.+ps The United States transports included 450,000 tons of German origin; 300,000 tons supplied by commandeered Dutch boats; and 718,000 tons provided by the Emergency Fleet Corporation.]

More effective use of s.h.i.+pping was fostered by the War Trade Board, which had been created six months after the declaration of war by the Trading with the Enemy Act (October 6, 1917), and which, in conjunction with the activities of the Alien Property Custodian, possessed full powers to curtail enemy trade. It thereby obtained practical control of the foreign commerce of this country, and was able both to conserve essential products for American use and to secure and economize tonnage.

Such control was a.s.sured through a system of licenses for exports and imports. No goods could be s.h.i.+pped into or out of the country without a license, which was granted by the War Trade Board only after investigation of the character of the s.h.i.+pment and its destination or source. The earlier export of goods which had found their way to Germany through neutral countries was thus curtailed and the blockade on Germany became strangling. Products necessary to military effectiveness were secured from neutral states in return for permission to buy essentials here. Two millions of tonnage were obtained from neutral states for the use of the United States and Great Britain. Trade in non-essentials with the Orient and South America was limited, extra bottoms were thus acquired, and the production of non-essentials at home discouraged. Altogether, the War Trade Board exercised tremendous powers which, however necessary, might have provoked intense resentment in business circles; but these powers were enforced with a tact and discretion characteristic of the head of the Board, Vance McCormick, who was able successfully to avoid the irritation that might have been expected from such governmental interference with freedom of commerce.

The problem of labor was obviously one that must be faced by each of the war boards or administrations, and nearly all of them were compelled to establish some sort of labor division or tribunal within each separate field. The demands made upon the labor market by war industry were heavy, for the withdrawal of labor into the army created an inevitable scarcity at the moment when production must be increased, and the different industries naturally were brought to bid against each other; the value of any wage scale was constantly affected by the rising prices, while the introduction of inexperienced workmen and women affected the conditions of piecework, so that the question of wages and conditions of labor gave rise to numerous discussions. The Labor Committee of the Council of National Defense had undertaken to meet such problems as early as February, 1917, but it was not until the beginning of the next year that the Department of Labor underwent a notable reorganization with the purpose of effecting the coordination necessary to complete success.

Unlike the food, fuel, and transportation problems, which were solved through new administrations not connected with the Department of Agriculture, the Bureau of Mines, or the Interstate Commerce Commission respectively, that of labor was met by new bureaus and boards which were organic parts of the existing Department of Labor. In January, 1918, that Department undertook the formulation and administration of a national war labor policy. Shortly afterwards delegates of the National Industrial Conference Board and of the American Federation of Labor, representing capital and labor, worked out a unanimous report upon the principles to be followed in labor adjustment. To enforce these recommendations the President, on April 9, 1918, appointed a National War Labor Board, which until November sat as a court of final appeal in labor disputes. An index of the importance of the Board was given by the choice of ex-President Taft as one of its chairmen. A month later, a War Labor Policies Board was added to the system to lay down general rules for the use of the War Labor Board in the rendering of its judgments.

Not merely enthusiasm and brains enabled America to make the extraordinary efforts demanded by the exigencies of war. Behind every line of activity lay the need of money: and the raising of money in amounts so large that they pa.s.sed the comprehension of the average citizen, forms one of the most romantic stories of the war. It is the story of the enthusiastic cooperation of rich and poor: Wall Street and the humblest foreign immigrants gave of their utmost in the attempt to provide the all-important funds for America and her a.s.sociates in the war. Citizens accepted the weight of income and excess profit taxes far heavier than any American had previously dreamed of. They were asked in addition to buy government bonds to a total of fourteen billions, and they responded by oversubscribing this amount by nearly five billions. Of the funds needed for financing the war, the Government planned to raise about a third by taxation, and the remainder by the sale of bonds and certificates maturing in from five to thirty years. It would have proved the financial statesmans.h.i.+p of McAdoo had he dared to raise a larger proportion by taxation; for thus much of the inflation which inevitably resulted from the bond issues might have been avoided. But the Government feared alike for its popularity and for the immediate effect upon business, which could not safely be discouraged. As it was, the excess profit taxes aroused great complaint. The amount raised in direct taxation represented a larger proportion of the war budget than any foreign nation had been able to secure from tax revenues.

In seeking to sell its bonds the Government, rather against its will, was compelled to rely largely upon the capitalists. The large popular subscriptions would have been impossible but for the a.s.sistance and enthusiasm shown by the banks in the selling campaign. Wall Street and the bankers of the country were well prepared and responded with all their strength, a response which deserves the greater credit when we remember the lack of sympathy which had existed between financial circles and President Wilson's Administration. Largely under banking auspices the greatest selling campaign on record was inaugurated. Bonds were placed on sale at street corners, in theaters, and restaurants; disposed of by eminent operatic stars, moving-picture favorites, and wounded heroes from the front. Steeple jacks attracted crowds by their perilous antics, in order to start the bidding for subscriptions. Villages and isolated farmhouses were canva.s.sed. The banks used their entire machinery to induce subscriptions, offering to advance the subscription price. When during the first loan campaign the rather unwise optimism of the Treasury cooled enthusiasm for a moment, by making it appear that the loan could be floated without effort, Wall Street took up the load. The first loan was oversubscribed by a billion. The success of the three loans that followed was equally great; the fourth, coming in October, 1918, was set for six billion dollars, the largest amount that had ever been asked of any people, and after a three weeks' campaign, seven billions were subscribed. Quite as notable as the amount raised was the progressive increase in the number of subscribers, which ranged from four million individuals in the first loan to more than twenty-one millions in the fourth. Equally notable, as indicating the educative effect of the war and of the sale of these Liberty Bonds, was the successful effort to encourage thrift. War Savings societies were inst.i.tuted and children saved their pennies and nickels to buy twenty-five cent ”thrift stamps”

which might be acc.u.mulated to secure interest-bearing savings certificates. Down to November 1, 1918, the sale of such stamps totalled $834,253,000, with a maturity value of more than a billion dollars.

The successful organizing of national resources to supply military demands obviously depended, in the last instance, upon the education of the people to a desire for service and sacrifice. The Liberty Loan campaigns, the appeals of Hoover, and the Fuel Administration, all were of importance in producing such morale. In addition the Council of National Defense, through the Committee on Public Information, spread pamphlets emphasizing the issues of the war and the objects for which we were fighting. At every theater and moving-picture show, in the factories during the noon hours, volunteer speakers told briefly of the needs of the Government and appealed for cooperation. These were the so-called ”Four Minute Men.” The most noted artists gave their talent to covering the billboards with patriotic and informative posters. Blue Devils who had fought at Verdun, captured tanks, and airplanes, were paraded in order to bring home the realities of the life and death struggle in which America was engaged. The popular response was inspiring. In the face of the national enthusiasm the much-vaunted plans of the German Government for raising civil disturbance fell to the ground. Labor was sometimes disorganized by German propaganda; destruction of property or war material was accomplished by German agents; and valuable information sometimes leaked out to the enemy. But the danger was always kept in check by the Department of Justice and also by a far-reaching citizen organization, the American Protective League. Equally surprising was the lack of opposition to the war on the part of pacifists and socialists. It was rare to find the ”sedition” for which some of them were punished, perhaps over-promptly, translated from words to actions.

The organization of the industrial resources of the nation was complicated by the same conditions that affected the purely military problems--decentralization and the emergency demands that resulted from the sudden decision to send a large expeditionary force to France. The various organizing boards were so many individual solutions for individual problems. At the beginning of the war the Council of National Defense represented the only attempt at a central business organization, and as time went on the importance and the influence of the Council diminished. The effects of decentralization became painfully apparent during the bitter cold of the winter months, when the fuel, transportation, and food crises combined to threaten almost complete paralysis of the economic and military mobilization.

The distrust and discouragement that followed brought forth furious attacks upon the President's war policies, led not merely by Roosevelt and Republican enemies of the Administration, but by Democratic Senators.