RAILROAD CONTROL BILL The law under which the United States Government will control and operate all the railroads of the country for the duration of the war was passed by Congress on March 14, 1918, and sent to the Presirent to be signed. Among its chief provisions are these: Government control of the roads shall not continue more than twenty-one months after the war; there is an appropriation of $500,000,000 for a revolving fund; the short lines are included within the Federal system, and compensation of the railroads is provided for on the basis of their average net income for the three years ended June 30, 1917, amounting approximately to $945,000,000 annually. The bill also provides that the State power of taxation of carriers shall be undisturbed, and that the Interstate Commerce Commission shall be the final arbiter of rates, in the fixing of which increases in expenses due to the war are to be taken into consideration. Following the passing of the bill, plans for the future organization of the Government Railroad Administration were discussed the same night at a conference between President Wilson and Mr. McAdoo, Director General of Railroads. One of the first tasks is making contracts with each railroad company for Government compensation on the basis provided in the bill. The contracts are to be negotiated under the direction of John Barton Payne, chief counsel; John Skelton Williams, Finance Director, and C. A. Prouty, Chief of the Division of Accounts. The railroads have been ordered by Director General McAdoo to make an inventory of materials and supplies on hand Dec. 31, 1917, when private control ceased, for use in connection with Government administration of purchases, additions and betterments, and railroad financing. Our Soldiers Insured for $12,000,000,000 Nearly All Have $10,000 Policies [The appended summary of the work of the War Risk Board is based on a recent study by Lawrence Priddy, President of the National Association of Life Underwriters] THE HE act creating this insurance as passed by Congress and approved by the President Oct. 6, 1917, makes three separate and distinct provisions for those in active military service: 1. Family allowances and compulsory savings. 2. Compensation for death and disability. 3. Optional life insurance. (Meaning that, in addition to the benefits provided under the first two headings, those who desire may purchase additional life and disability insurance.) The insurance to be issued on the yearly renewable term plan. The act provided that any person then in the military service would be insured automatically against death and permanent disability for the sum of approximately $5,000, provided he had a wife, child, or widowed mother. Persons joining the service after that have the privilege of applying for the insurance within 120 days after enlistment. The automatic feature expired Feb. 12. At the time of the passage of this act those representatives of the Government who were particularly instrumental in promoting the measure believed that with the passage of the bill there would be a tremendous demand for this insurance, but it was early discovered that the demand had to be created; that "life insurance is sold and not bought," and this notwithstanding the fact that the guarantee back of the contract is the United States Government itself, and that it is offered at a cost to the insured of about one-tenth of what it will cost to provide the insurance. For example, the Government offers to insure all applicants (up to $10,000) at age 20 for $7.68 per $1,000 per annum. (Most of the Government premiums payable monthly.) At age 30 the Government rate is only $8.28 per $1,000. are The Government policy also furnishes While the premium paid by the soldier is very small, it is believed that the cost to the Government for those soldiers who take part in actual warfare will be about $80 per thousand per annum. The preliminary campaigns to induce the soldiers to take out insurance were not entirely successful, so on Dec. 29 the Secretary of the Treasury summoned to Washington a group of practical insurance men. That group was told that it was the earnest desire of the Secretary of the Treasury and others in charge of the administration of this measure that the benefits of this insurance should be clearly and forcefully presented to all soldiers and sailors then in the service, and this group was asked to arrange a campaign for the sale of this insurance. The responsibility for this campaign was vested in a smaller group, known as the Soldiers' and Sailors' Campaign Council, and they spent about ten days investigating what had been done, how it had been done, and in planning a selling campaign to be conducted with more or less uniformity at all military and naval stations, and this campaign was launched Jan. 12. Up to that time there had been received at the Bureau of War Risk Insurance 427,811 applications for a total of $3,633,213,000, (an average of $8,493 per person.) The records indicate that the work done was highly successful, for at the close of the campaign, Feb. 12, there had been actually received at the bureau 1,123,749 applications for a total of $9,189,156,500 insurance, and on March 6 the applications received or in transit totaled more than $12,000,000,000, covering 1,500,000 persons in the military and naval service. In many of the units of the various camps every man has purchased the full ten thousand; there are eight camps in which 99 per cent. of the men are insured by the Government, and on Feb. 28 more than 90 per cent. of all the men in the service had availed themselves of this privilege. The average policy on the lives of our soldiers was $9,186. War Activities of the United States Navy Address by Franklin D. Roosevelt Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, in a recent address to the Harvard Alumni Association, threw some new light on the work of the United States Navy in European waters. He said in part: TH HERE are two present phases of naval warfare, the first being the antisubmarine defense and second the battleship fleet. We sent a few destroyers in April, 1917, and kept sending more during the following months. These destroyers operated in certain localities on the other side, and charts plotted to show the sinkings by submarines proved an immediate falling off in the number of sinkings in these zones. The difficulty is that the ocean is altogether too large to cover as a whole with anti-submarine craft. As a matter of fact, sinkings are still going on in very great numbers. Those sinkings are almost wholly confined to a small area within a short distance of land. You would think the Allies would be able to control this area, but we have not onetenth the amount of equipment necessary to patrol all the waters close to shore, let alone further out. The reason submarines go close to shore is because there they find a concentration of ships, as almost day and night a continuous procession of merchant ships go up and out of the English Channel, Irish Channer, &c. It is quite a mistaken notion to think that the English Channel is closed to submarines or that all the submarines have their base on the Belgian coast. Only some of the older and smaller submarines and mine layers are there, the majority of the larger ones coming out from Wilhelmshaven, which is on the North Sea side of the canal, or from Kiel, on the Baltic side. We are making as good a contribution as we can toward the increase of patrols. We are building a great number of destroyers, which we hope to have completed in from ten to sixteen months. That seems a long time, but under the 1916 program the best bid for completion was twenty-five months, and getting 'down to ten, or even sixteen, months is quite an achievement. In addition to the destroyers, we are turning out other types. We have turned out a type of vessel which has taken the officers by surprise. This is called the 110-foot patrol boat. It is very interesting, built of wood and propelled by gasoline. A great number of these boats have been placed in commission already, and on their sea trips they seem to have excellent sea-keeping qualities. In fighting the submarine the depth charge is very useful and effective. These charges have a small piece of mechanism which is set, and when the bomb has descended to a given depth it will explode; it can be set to explode at any depth. The first depth charges were those of fifty pounds, and they would hurt a submarine only if they went off almost in actual contact. The result was that they had to be increased in size, and now the depth charges weigh much more than fifty pounds, and their area of destruction is large. One interesting feature of increasing the size of depth charges was that we had to increase the speed of the ship to protect the ship itself. Much work has also been done on other devices that we may not talk about. Experimentation is going on, and will increase if the war lasts, and it will in the end prove an effective answer to the submarine. The answer to the submarine is being carried today by building as many vessels against them as can possibly be built, and, second, by building all the merchant tonnage we can and arming that merchant tonnage. We are apt to forget that over on the other side the control of the surface of the ocean has been absolutely maintained by the existence of the British battleship fleet. There have been a few raids on the coast of England, and a few engagements in the North Sea, but today the relative strength of the British Navy is at least as great against the German Navy as at the outbreak of the war. Furthermore, they have the active cooperation of the French and American surface ships of heavy tonnage. We have, of course, many battleships on this coast that little is heard about. We have had to use the oldest ones largely as training schools, especially for the training of the gun crews of the merchant ships. We have already armed over 1,000 merchant ships with fairly heavy guns. There have been few, and there will be fewer, cases of American ships being successfully shelled and put out of action by the submarine. We learned the lesson from the English. As to surface control no one is worried. The British, with the assistance of the Americans, have successfully bottled up the Germans in the North Sea. It is a pity to have to hold them on defensive terms only. There are many who believe in the dictum that a defensive policy on the sea leads to defeat, and the rôle of the British battleship fleet has been considered by many to be purely defensive. However, authorities like Mahan and others have always maintained that an offensive can consist of two methods of war; first, to seek the enemy and destroy him in his own rat hole '; secondly, so to place yourself about the 'mouth of the rat hole' that the rat cannot come out. That is practically what has happened. The Germans are free at any time to come out with their battleship fleet, and very often they do come out, but for a very short distance. The stories we read from Berlin that the Germans came out for three days, &c., are true, but they have always kept conveniently close to their hiding place. So ready is the British fleet that it is said that on one occasion they had given shore liberty to many hundreds of men; then word came that the German THE fleet was out and might be cut off, and within twenty-two minutes the British fleet was ready and on the way to the scene of action. Shipbuilding Difficulties Overcome Mr. Hurley's Report of Progress HE shipbuilding program adopted by the United States as an urgent war measure encountered many obstacles, including those due to the worst Winter in the recorded history of the Eastern United States. The Spring of 1918, however, has found definite results accomplished in many new shipyards that have been brought into existence since the United States entered the war. Figures issued by the Shipping Board on March 9 showed that in February seventeen vessels of 120,700 tons were completed and put into service. The total was nearly twice that of January, admittedly a bad month, when only nine vessels, with a tonnage of 79,541, were delivered. Launchings more than kept pace with deliveries, sixteen ships of 112,500 tons being put into the water in January, and fifteen of 77,900 tons in February. Of the vessels completed in February, fifteen were cargo carriers, one was a tanker, and one a collier. Summing up the situation on March 4, 1918, Edward N. Hurley, Chairman of the Shipping Board, said that there were then 130 shipyards, with 700 ways and 500,000 men, occupied with the production of 1,600 ships. A Seattle shipyard had already broken all world's records by launching an 8,000-ton steel ship in sixty-four days, and yards on the Atlantic Coast were preparing to beat the Pacific Coast record. At the Hog Island yard of the American International Shipbuilding Corporation the first keel was laid on Feb. 12, six days ahead of schedule time, and on Feb. 28, the date set for the second keel, there were ways ready for ten additional ships. A fuller account of the Hog Island shipyard, the largest in the world, will be found under a separate heading. On March 1 it was reported that vessels were to come from the plant of the Federal Shipbuilding Company, at Kearny, N. J., six weeks ahead of the time fixed in the contract with the Government. Instead of finishing one ship every month the yard had reached a stage wherein it could finish one ship every three weeks. The Federal Shipbuilding Company was incorporated in July, 1917, by the United States Steel Corporation. At that time the 175 acres occupied by the yard went under six feet of water every time the tide came in. Now they have been built up nine feet, and twelve miles of railroad track have been laid. Five thousand men will be employed when shipbuilding is in full swing. In a much more advanced condition in every respect is the new shipyard of the Merchants' Shipbuilding Corporation at Bristol, Penn., the second of the huge fabricating yards being built for the construction of standardized steel merchant ships. In respect to the number of ways it is the smallest of the three, for while there are to be fifty ways for building ships at Hog Island and twenty-eight ways at the yard at Port Newark, at the Bristol plant there are only twelve. The Bristol plant, however, is to build the largest ships of the three yards, freighters of 9,000 tons deadweight capacity, while 7,500-ton and 8,000-ton ships are to be built at Hog Island, and 5,000-ton vessels at Port Newark. The shipyard of the Submarine Boat Corporation on Newark Bay, with twenty-eight shipways, has thirteen keels laid of the fifty ships of 5,000 tons which it is under contract to build before it begins work on another contract of 100 vessels of the same size. The important question of housing the armies of workers was settled on March 1, when President Wilson signed the Emergency Fleet Corporation Housing bill, which empowers the Government to commandeer boarding houses, hotels, apartments, and even private homes near shipyards, and to build new houses wherever necessary. The bill carried an appropriation of $50,000,000, and the Emergency Fleet Corporation has authority to extend loans to private shipyards at 5 per cent. to carry on this work. It does not, however, bear the expense of the new homes, except at Government-owned yards. Following President Wilson's intervention in the dispute between the shipyard workers and the employers, (See CURRENT HISTORY, March, 1918, Page 422,) conferences were held and differences finally adjusted by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America and the Shipping Board. A new cause of delay, due to the attitude of labor unions, arose from the shortage of caulkers. In reply to an appeal for caulkers, William L. Hutcheson, President of the Carpenters' Brotherhood, notified the Shipping Board on March 8 that it could expect no assistance from him in speeding up ship construction until his "closed shop" demands had been granted. The American merchant fleet was in creased by 399 seagoing vessels in the last six months of 1917, or an average of more than two a day. Many of the vessels were built in the United States, having been under construction for foreign account and taken over by the United States Government. Others were interned German ships, but the large steamers like the Vaterland, which were commandeered by the navy, were not included in the total of 399. Figures previously made public showed that more than 1,000,000 tons of shipping were added to the American merchant marine in 1917. Speaking in the House of Commons on Feb. 13, Andrew Bonar Law, Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that in 1917 there were built in Great Britain 1,163,474 tons of shipping, and 170,000 tons were obtained from abroad. The Chancellor explained that the Premier's estimate of ship construction was not realized because the Government had arranged to have a large quantity of tonnage built in America, but when America came into the war she preferred, as the British would have preferred, to take the tonnage herself, but the tonnage, he remarked, was there. The output of the United States during 1917 was 901,223 tons, making a total combined tonnage of 2,064,697 for the two countries. Heroic Rescue by American Naval Men The heroism and seamanship displayed by the crew of the United States destroyer Parker when rescuing survivors of the British hospital ship Glenart Castle, which was sunk in the Bristol Channel on Feb. 26, 1918, was the subject of eulogistic references in the House of Commons on March 13. According to the official report 153 persons perished in the sinking of the Glenart Castle. Thomas J. Macnamara, Financial Secretary of the Admiralty, said that the Admiralty had expressed its very deep gratitude for the manner in which the Americans had dealt with this matter. He understood that the American authorities were averse to the award of personal distinctions. Nevertheless, if the Admiralty could properly make any suggestion to them which would enable it in a substantial way to emphasize its opinion of this act of gallantry it certainly would do so. Two of the destroyer's complement deserved the greatest credit for their action in jumping overboard to effect rescues, in view of the temperature of the water, the choppy sea, and the distance of the raft from which the rescues were effected. The Americans who jumped into the water in the course of the rescues were: J. C. Cole, quartermaster; R. E. Hosses, boatswain's mate; David Goldman, machinist's mate; Jerry Quinn, coxswain; F. W. Beeghley, yeoman; W. W. |