Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 96, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1918 — U. S. CANCELS 24 SHIP CONTRACTS [ARTICLE]

U. S. CANCELS 24 SHIP CONTRACTS

Government Takes Action Firms—No More Hog Island Programs. HURLEY TO SEIZE LUMBER No More Private Yards Will Be Developed With Government Money —Lumber Commandeered in South. Washington, March I.—Summary action against mismanaged shipyards was announced by the United States shipping board. Twenty-four steel ship contracts were canceled. Further cancellations are under advisement. Inspection is being made of inefficient yards with a view to commandeering them. The first to feel the board’s heavy hand are the Southern Shipbuilding company, Charleston, S. 0., which has lust lost the contracts for 16 steel ships, and the Hampton Shipbuilding Company of Norfolk, whose coin tracts for eight ships have been canceled. Southern Lumber Seized. Edward N. Hurley, chairman of the shipping board, said short shrift will be given to paltering. The board has lost patience with the South’s receding promise to furnish tlrfiber for the wooden shipyards. It la now commandeering lumber on the property of the members of the Southern Pine association, which holds the bulk of the contracts and has not filled them. ——-__— Get-Rich-Quick Barred. The board, It was said, bluntly, will finance no more patriotic get-rlch-qulck schemes. There will be no more Hog Island shipping programs. No more private yards will be developed .with government money. It will start no new shipyards, or subsidize incipient ones with cost-plus contracts. ■ ? The Southern woAden ship program has not met expectations, according to the shipping board. Lumber Men Slack. Despite that a mlillon dollars more was added to the profits of the Southern lumbermen on shipyard contracts, after the contracts were made, by advancing the price from $35 to S4O a thousand feet to encourage logging production, the supply has failed. Following fruitless conferences with the lumber Interests, in repeated attempts to speed up production of timber, the shipping board has sent its own staff of loggers into the timber country, with authority to commandeer all suitable trees. Any one who wants to build ships for Uncle Sam must show he has the organization to build ships before he can get contracts, says Hurley. The shipping board rejected several offers from men with little or nothing with which to build ships.