Foreword.—This paper was prepared about February, 1904, and statements involving time refer to that date.
Since that time, the general staff, as a legislative proposition, has apparently died on its own merits, and not because it lacked for representation.
The scheme herein presented is not as ideal as if made out of new cloth, but is practicable in that it utilizes personnel already on hand, and distributes employment in accordance with present practice as far as consistent with the essential feature of consolidation.
In connection with this paper I wish to cite two ancient arguments, and answer them in order, viz.:
(1) They say, "that after consolidation, the duties must again be subdivided among the various experts, which is the same practice as now; hence, nothing will be gained thereby." "That such a condition already exists in a commandant and his heads of departments, and you will only get back to where you started from."
This fallacy is simple, although it has been a puzzle for amateurs during many years past. It is a fact that personnel in any office must be assigned to duties in accordance with individual aptitude, and even subdivided to suit the class of work. Such is found in any business office anywhere. The flaw lies in the failure to perceive the difference between a single office and a single set of account books, executive orders, shops, and workmen, and a collective industrial establishment of six separate offices, each a power unto itself, duplicating each other and making work for each other. The difference in the application of expert services in the two cases is immaterial, and cuts no figure in the governing considerations. The main thing is to have an expert head of the single industrial department who will bear the responsibility for the cost of the work. A commandant must exercise military control over the whole naval station, one unit of which should be the industrial department, the other units being the naval hospital, marine barracks, pay office, general storekeeper's storehouses, receiving ships, observatory, pharmacy, ships in ordinary, and ships in commission under repairs, respectively. By this arrangement a commandant would have his hands full doing precisely the same things as now, and would have the same control as now; the only change being a consolidation of units under his control.
(2) They say, "it is a good thing to have separate bureaus, since professional rivalry induces excellence in results."
That is an argument whose greatest vogue existed in the days of the ante-amalgamation line-engineer wrangles. Professional disputes in navy-yard industry have never been recommended as a time and money-saving device. No well-regulated establishment in civil life would permit for a moment a controversy-breeding state of affairs among its employes. That would be considered the first signal of collective inefficiency.
Finally, I wish it clearly understood that in this paper my criticisms do not apply to bureaus, or boards, or departments, or individuals, as such; none of the above deserve criticism from me in this connection, it being evident that each must operate as best it can under the system in which it finds itself. The fault is in the system as a collective institution, and I hope therefore not to be misunderstood.
INTRODUCTORY.
There seems to be a spirit of dissatisfaction all over the country with the alleged shortcomings of our methods of naval administration, and at the present time the available testimony from all sources tends to give a confusion of ideas that is apt to lead us astray should we make a wrong diagnosis of the case.
First and foremost, there is a demand on the part of congress for greater economy in navy-yard industry. This has been brought about by the demand of labor unions to have naval vessels built in navy-yards, and the actuating motive lies in the fact that the shipbuilding tradesmen prefer to work in navy-wards, where they have better pay, higher ratings, and shorter hours; and where the physical strain and nervous tension are less than in private shipyards engaged in the necessity of making profit. Furthermore, the rules of labor unions are more nearly adhered to in navy-yards in matters governing the limits of work in its distribution among different classes of mechanics. The private shipyard is bound, by the price of its existence, to disregard the rules of labor unions to the farthest limit in the matter of employing the least possible skilled labor where unskilled labor will suffice, and of utilizing the maximum limit of boys and apprentices. No shipyard ever adopts all the rules of the labor unions, but disregards them as far as is profitable and practicable. Navy-yards are more sensitive to the demands of the worker because they are part of a political system of government, and the labor vote is all powerful. The navy-yard is the Mecca of the shipbuilding trades, and the personal interests involved would transfer the labor of building naval ships from private to government yards.
This pressure brought to bear upon congress has caused an unprecedented exposure of government methods in which it has been proved beyond question that navy-yard work is more expensive, and requires longer time, than shipyard work. The time and cost of building the Maine, Texas, Cincinnati, and Raleigh, are familiar to the public, and that of every article of furniture or equipage manufactured in a navy-yard is available proof of the excessive cost which nobody at this time can deny.
The comparative figures are positive evidence that the fact exists. The fuss being made in various quarters has, thus, some foundation in fact. Now as to the cause.
Testimony of the highest and the lowest authorities has laid the cause at the door of the administrative system of navy-yards, which is conceded to be cumbersome, unwieldy, and expensive, due to the divided authority distributed among several heads of departments. The foregoing are established facts proved by the superabundance of evidence that has accumulated for many years past. The circumstantial evidence with which the congressmen most interested have become impressed is found in the duplication, and triplication, and quadruplication of separate plants within a navy-yard, each department being, or endeavoring to be, complete in itself and independent of the others. No amount of conflicting testimony can prevent the inevitable conclusion which American men of intelligence must form in this epoch of business combinations. There is no doubt about the cause of the present state of affairs; the only problem is the remedy.
The foregoing conditions have been brought to the front entirely from considerations outside the service proper, but in the midst of this unsettled state of feeling comes a hue and cry from within the navy by the advocates of a general staff which, they say, is warranted to cure all the existing ills. It is claimed that a permanent body of line officers, in addition to those already on hand, should be established within the navy department for the purpose, primarily, of furnishing a "mere civilian secretary" with hand-picked knowledge of strategy to direct the fleet and "wield the navy as a weapon," and incidentally to coerce the multi-bureau system into uniform ideas and economical habits by the power of military rank and authority. I think that is the gist of it. The purpose seems to be to confine these operations to the mental and paper machinery inside the Navy Department at Washington. The motif of this campaign, with high rank and emoluments dangling around it, has been brought into question by the current literature on the subject.
The foregoing facts constitute the summary of the present conditions as they exist, and it shall be my purpose to analyze the situation from its various bearings, and endeavor to find a remedy.
NAVAL ADMINISTRATION.
It is necessary to recognize, in the first place, that three separate and distinct methods of administration are found within the operations of the Navy Department, comprising what we understand as naval administration. These three divisions may be classified under the heads, (1) Political, (2) Military, and (3) Industrial.
The political system is represented by the head of the Navy Department, who is, and ever will be, a civilian, because the spirit and essence of our government is based on a subjection of the military to the civil institution.
The political administration as above classified is frequently referred to as civil administration, which it is; but so also is industrial administration, and to avoid confusion, the foregoing classification will be adhered to throughout.
Military administration refers to that under the line officers, who alone are eligible to the supreme command of a ship, a squadron, or a fleet. Line officer means a naval officer in the line of promotion to such command. The functions are purely military, and the purely military field of operations finds its most correct example on board a ship or in a fleet. Shipboard administration will be considered the exact expression of military administration in the navy. The strategy and directing power of a fleet are included in the same definition.
By industrial administration is meant that portion engaged in the production and manufacture of a ship and its accessories, which may be more closely defined as those departments engaged in procuring materials and operating civilian mechanics in producing the ship. Navy-yard administration is industrial in all that applies to workshop and civil employe as found to exist in the analogous institution of a private shipyard; being military only by virtue of the supreme authority vested in a commandant.
(1) POLITICAL ADMINISTRATION.
The Secretary of the Navy represents the political administrator. Politics is our method of securing government of the people, by the people, for the people. The politically successful man is one selected by the majority as their representative because of personal attributes most acceptable to the people, whose actions the people believe will be most agreeable to themselves, concerned. He is, presumably, the embodiment of our form of government, and to his authority the military and industrial considerations must bow.
The political feature finds its expression in various ways ill naval administration over and above all other considerations contemplated in the military establishment as laid down in the navy regulations. If a ship must be overhauled and repaired and two navy-yards desire to get the work, the workmen's representatives that clamor loudest usually get it, that being the will of the majority that care anything about it. Within the service the opinion always holds that such matters, as all others, should be determined by the absolute merits of the case, regardless of clamors. The military administrator must determine his actions by merit, that being the root and foundation of his education and training, and he cares little about the will of the people where his position is not influenced by such a regard. A naval officer is not in the best position to be a political administrator;—he can read from the mercurial barometer an approach of a storm at sea, but he is handicapped where it comes to feeling the pulse of the people from the touch of the political barometer.
Political administration finds its way into the service in shifting ships and work from one station to another, in shifting personnel in like manner, in the location of navy-yards and naval stations, in appropriations for new buildings and new expenditures of all kinds at the various stations; it determines whether vessels shall be built or repaired at navy-yards. In time of war political considerations divert naval vessels from the fleet to patrol the coasts in the vicinity of frightened political communities. It has given high position to political favorites, and has determined the command of ships and squadrons. Sometimes it goes even farther and influences the actions of naval boards in their duties under the regulations. Boards have been known to have their recommendations returned for revision until they meet the political desires, or another board may be called to reverse their actions, and so on until the desired results are attained. This operates to promote personnel in some cases, to discharge or retire it in others. It operates sometimes to increase the pay of the navy-yard mechanic. Its existence has been alleged in political contests against nonpartisan shipbuilders in the trials of vessels, and it shows itself in various forms in the distribution of contracts for new ships, and is constantly at work in the purchase and acceptance of all sorts of materials for government use. The head of a government department is sensitive to the representations of the people; if he is not, some one soon takes his place who is. Of course there have been abuses as in every other department of life, but a good administrator knows enough not to try to reform the people, or the political system of which he is a part; he does his part best if he recognizes facts as they exist; and he concedes to political demands, if they are logical, where it makes no material difference otherwise, and where it does not interfere with the object for which his institution was created.
I am not attempting to lay down rules, but merely to place an estimate on what appears to have been the guiding features of political administration from the evidences that have come to notice in the past.
Is such a political government an abuse? Should the people rule the people? If the public's wishes be disregarded, the government becomes autocratic by definition, and how else can their wishes be made known except through their representatives? If reform, who will attempt it, and how? Would the creation of a general staff, or any other sort of mechanism, inside the Navy Department destroy, limit, or influence in any way the politics of the head of the department as it applies to the military and industrial establishments? It may as well be conceded, in the light of history, that the political administration, whatever its good or evil, will remain untrammeled as long as our form of government exists.
(2) MILITARY ADMINISTRATION.
Only on board a naval vessel does military discipline hold complete sway. The order of the captain is the law and must be obeyed without question, argument, or appeal to a higher power. The captain must confine his actions to the limits prescribed by law, but inside those limits he can cover almost any sort of overbearing conduct toward those beneath him, officers and men alike. He cannot strike them, or punish them physically beyond the lawful limit; but he can harangue them and institute such a personal bearing toward them as to punish them mentally beyond degree. There is no appeal from an order, which must be obeyed with alacrity whether right or wrong, and he who refuses classifies his action with the mutineers, the limit of which, in grave cases, is death. He who answers back goes to prison, but he cannot resign or be discharged. I am merely specifying the limits in order to distinguish more clearly between military and industrial administration and to show that a trained military administrator is as different from an industrial, as from a political, administrator.
Our bureau system is represented in miniature on the ship. The captain represents the bureau of navigation which directs his own actions and the movements of the ship. Although the other bureaus are represented, not one of them has any right or power of appeal that would modify in the least the perfect and absolute control of the directing administrative bureau, and its captain, in the wielding of the ship as a fighting machine. In this point it differs from navy-yard administration, as we shall see presently. The executive officer represents the bureau of construction and repair, and the ordnance, equipment, medical, pay, and marine officers, represent the corresponding bureaus. In the operation of the bureau system in the use of tools, stores, etc., there are no conflictions; they are used where needed indiscriminately by shipboard authority or without. If one bureau's machine breaks down another bureau's force repairs it, if more handy. The bureau representatives themselves are not expert in the lines of demarcation and cognizance of the bureaus, a line officer representing a staff bureau, and there is no provision for appeal beyond the ship if one should so desire. In other words, the captain has complete control of his ship and all her accessories, and the bureau system divides the duties of officers into a convenient distribution of the work. Military efficiency is attained by drilling, innate intelligence, alacrity in obedience to orders, and the good example and rigid discipline that must be maintained by the officers at all hazards. Admiral Farragut laid down a military rule for all time when he said to his officers, "Whatever is to be done must be done quickly." Shipboard efficiency consists in preparedness and alacrity. It has little to do with dollars and cents. Military economy is exercised in taking care of the materials and avoiding waste, in about the same way as one would take care of a new suit of clothes, or would eat sparingly of his provisions during a long journey; it has nothing to do with saving money by a judicial distribution of the laboring forces, to obtain the best returns for the money expended, which forms the essence of industrial administration. On the contrary, shipboard administration contemplates expending the maximum amount of labor in order to fill up the time. Those who have been to sea know the monotony of having nothing to do, which tends to generate the spirit of unhappiness. Hence the sailor's proverb that the best commander keeps his crew happy by keeping them busy. Happiness is healthy for the mind, labor is healthy for the body, and these essentials permit of the attainment of military preparedness, alertness, and efficiency. Industrial economy is a different profession. It is a law of humanity that a man is most proficient in the line of his ambitions. The highest ambition of a line officer is to command at sea. In that position the eyes of the whole world may be turned on him in war, and his name may be in every mouth. He may bring honor or disgrace to his country. He must be a specialist in the strictest sense, but not a general practitioner. Besides familiarity with the methods of wielding the men and the tools at his disposal, he must be familiar with strategy, international law, naval history, navigation, and tactics. None can afford to be an indifferent expert in these branches, for a single blunder in one might lose all. No profession in civil life forms any sort of analogy or comparison to that of a line officer, and it is a matter of current belief that the easy habits and disciplinary notions of naval training unfit an officer for civil pursuits; and it is likewise apparent that civilians never have been, and cannot be, eligible to the position of a line officer, without the necessary course of training. It requires no analytical mind to discern the irreconcilable differences between industrial and military administration.
(3) INDUSTRIAL ADMINISTRATION.
The peaceful arts of the shipbuilding mechanics comprise the industrial features of naval administration, as is represented by a navy-yard. The business of such an institution is to manufacture, repair, or assemble the vessel and her outfit. The production of the vessel belongs purely to civil industry, being the product of the shipbuilding trades under the cognizance of labor unions. The pay of a sailor is merely nominal in comparison with that of the mechanical tradesman, which furnishes an opening for a considerable loss of funds unless the quality of administration secures the best combinations in outlay of plant, in the purchase and handling of materials, and most important of all in the distribution and handling of the difficult and very expensive labor that fills up the navy-yards. The workmen may not be tongue-lashed, nor put in the brig, but they may be discharged if the administrator has a good case.
Now let us examine the operations of the bureau system as it applies to the industry of a navy-yard. The local representatives of bureaus comprise the corresponding Departments of Construction and Repair, Steam Engineering, Equipment, Yards and Docks, Ordnance, Supplies and Accounts, and Medicine and Surgery: The Bureau of Navigation is represented by the commandant.
The division of work assigned to each bureau, or department, is a development of the natural and convenient divisions that existed in shipbuilding when the bureaus were first formed in 1842. The original Bureau of Construction, Equipment and Repair controlled practically all the industry that was required to build a ship; it included all that is now represented by the three bureaus, Construction and Repair, Equipment, and Steam Engineering, the latter subdivisions having been made in 1862 during the stress of war. Had the construction bureau not been thus subdivided there would be a different tale to tell about the cost of navy-yard administration to-day. But no one could have foreseen the effect at that date. The subdivisions were natural ones inasmuch as the chief constructor, before that time, had an engineer as assistant to look after the steam machinery of the new motive power.
The wood shipbuilder viewed with suspicion the advent of steam, and the motive power of the future passed out of his hands to those who were willing to master it. A ship was then a simple affair and there was no question as to where the propelling machinery left off and where the ship began. The equipment bureau undertook to relieve the construction bureau of assembling movable articles not strictly a part of the ship, but corresponding more nearly to the furnishings, such as sails, rigging, anchors and chains, the electrical outfit, and the like. With the changes that have come about in modern shipbuilding, the steel ships of to-day, with their complex machinery, have merged all professions into one. The wood shipbuilder, as represented in the modern shipwright, has been driven almost out of business. His cognizance included the whole vessel in 1842, while now he is limited to the decks, and the outside sheathing if any. The steam engineer finds himself replacing his own auxiliary machinery with equipment motors, and he has to tolerate rival steam engines that form essential portions of the equipment and construction machinery. Likewise the equipment bureau finds rivals with electrical machinery in the bureaus of steam engineering and construction.
The original natural divisions of these three bureaus have become unnatural and very complex and illogical. All three operate both steam and electrical machinery, and generally throughout are trying to do similar work that now falls under one profession. I shall not endeavor to relate all the unreasonable subdivisions of the work in these bureaus, but will cite only a few samples; as new methods have been adopted, each bureau has claimed as much of the work as possible, and each head of department, disagreeing, has written out his case, and all the papers have gone to the Secretary of the Navy for decision. In the meantime, in many instances, the work has waited several months until the matter was settled. The decisions have not followed any rule, but the bureau in most favor at the time has generally won. If the question was referred to a board composed mostly of line officers, the decision was given very frequently to the line officer contestant, if there was the slightest possible justification for it. I would remark here that with a general staff of pure line officers to pass on such questions, the bulk of industrial administration would pass from the staff bureaus into the hands of the military administrators, in case human nature should not unexpectedly reform. To-day the department of Steam Engineering owns the steam pipes of Construction pumps and engines, the deck hatches and gratings and their fastenings leading to the boiler and engine rooms, and also that portion of the hull drainage pipes that drain these compartments; Equipment owns the dynamos, and the dynamo foundations if there are any, and the railing around them if attached to these foundations! Shall I go any further? Suffice it to say that the lines of cognizance between these bureaus are more mixed up than the present navy pay table. The fault is not in the bureau method, but in the fact that the bureau system has not been readjusted to suit the natural divisions of shipbuilding as they exist since the steel ship has created a revolution in shipbuilding methods. Shipbuilding was originally made up of several professions, but to-day it has merged into a single profession, and it not only includes the production of the whole ship but it operates the shipbuilding plant by which it controls the profit which forms the measure of efficiency in industrial administration. The remedy is the simplest business proposition in this country—consolidation. There is no economy in shifting cognizance from one bureau to another as now organized; each department has developed according to its needs by virtue of experience, and to shift its power, plant, or shop, to some other department only acts to deprive the one that needs it, and prevents the responsible party from controlling its own profits. There is a great deal of talk about consolidating the power plants of a navy-yard! The idea seems to be that only the power plants are duplicated. That is a very great error. Everything is duplicated and multiplied. In the navy-yard with which the writer has been associated for the past five years there are, in the several departments, the following shops, viz.:
6 Power plants,
8 Machine shops,
5 Joiner shops,
5 Paint shops,
5 Laborers' lobbies,
4 Blacksmith shops,
4 Pattern shops,
4 Tinshops,
4 Fuel oil plants,
4 Testing laboratories,
3 Electrical workshops,
3 Copper shops,
3 Riggers' gangs,
3 Polishing shops,
3 Fuel gas plants,
3 Foundries,
2 Steel-plate shops,
2 Electro-plating shops,
32 Storehouses, under separate roofs;
50 Material fields, or piles of materials, not under cover;
13 Coal sheds and bins, under separate roofs.
Some of the foregoing shops exist only in miniature, being parts of other shops, but are separate organizations doing similar work. A more exact idea of the extent of these repetitions may be gathered from the following:
Power plants: Construction and Repair owns two, one main and one auxiliary; Steam Engineering owns one; Yards and Docks owns two, one main and one docking plant (in the same building with the C. & R. plant); and Equipment owns one.
Machine shops: C. & R. has two main and one emergency (and two floating not counted above); S. E. has one main and one emergency; Equipment has one; and Ordnance has one.
Foundries: C. & R., S. E., and Equip. have one each.
Smitheries: C. & R., S. E., Y. & D., and Equip. have one each.
Joiner shops: The five departments have one each.
Pattern shops: The four departments, excluding Ordnance, have one each. Two of these have not separate shops but do their pattern-making in their joiner shops.
Tinshops: The four departments, excluding Ordnance, have one each, some doing tinwork with tinsmith machinery as parts of other shops.
Paint shops: The five departments have one each, two of them employing one, two, or more men sufficient to do their own painting.
Copper shops: C. & R., S. E., and Ord. have one each.
Steel-plate shops: C. & R. and Y. & D. have one each for working plates and shapes.
Electrical workshops: C. & R., Y. & D., and Equip. have one each.
Laborers' lobbies: The five departments each employ their own laborers' gangs and implements.
Fuel-oil plants: C. & R. has two; and S. E. and Y. & D., one each. Two of these are small units.
Gas plants: C. & R. has one, and Equip. and S. & A. (testing laboratory) have a small unit each.
Testing laboratories: C. & R., Y. & D., S. E., and S. & A. have one each.
Polishing shops: C. & R., S. E., and Equip. have one each.
Electro-plating shops: C. & R. and Equip. have one each.
Riggers' gangs: C. & R., S. E., and Equip. each employs its own gang of riggers.
The 32 storehouses comprise buildings and shops containing stores of any kind, whether in the possession of the general storekeeper, or of the department having cognizance of them.
The 50 material piles include every sort of material of value in separate lots, or different varieties, as distributed near the storehouses or shops where it is most likely to be used.
It may be noted that in each case of shop duplication above the construction and repair department has one, that being usually the largest one.
Now add to these the corresponding sets of foremen, clerks, and draftsmen in each department, and you have 75 foremen, 80 clerks, and 36 draftsmen. By foremen is meant master mechanics, quartermen, and leading men combined; i. e., men who superintend work. There are 13 foremen machinists, of whom 4 are master machinists. Of the 75 foremen, 40 occupy positions in charge of their respective gangs. Of the 8o clerks, 33 belong to the general storehouse. By clerks I mean all those who would be so termed in civil life.
In one department there is a leading man patternmaker in charge of 4 men; in another it requires a master patternmaker and a leading man for 7 men. In one, there is a quarterman molder for 15 men; in another, a master molder for 18 men, etc.
There is no necessity for more than one shop of each class and kind, as proved by the private shipyard, and no private shipyard could afford to have so many directing officials.
The shops and forces of the departments being duplicated, it follows that the heads of departments, and hence the departments themselves, are pretty nearly duplicated, which is, actually, from a shipbuilder's point of view, a fact. Nothing short of industrial consolidation will be worth while, and the establishment should not only be consolidated but it should be divorced from the military, so to speak; that is to say, the one shipbuilding department should be a unit under the one shipbuilding head, responsible for the economy of the work. Our navy-yards would then be as in France. We are moving toward the French methods. We tried the British Admiralty Board from 1779 to 1781, but abolished it. It was tried again from 1815 to 1842 in the form of the Navy Commissioners, but it was again abolished as being unsuitable. Every young nation tries first the British Admiralty method. It suits England for reasons purely English. The posts of honor and command are kept in the aristocracy for the benefit of the younger sons of the nobility. The line of the British Navy is sought by them as a profession. The "Board of Commissioners for the Execution of the Office of Lord High Admiral of His Britannic Majesty's Navy" belongs to a privileged class. In this country we expect a man to be responsible only for what he knows; our lords of industry are the engineering nobility who have won their titles by actual achievement in their own particular line.
We have left the British Admiralty method far behind long ago, and are approaching the French system. We hear of a general staff—that is what we somewhat erroneously translate the French etat-major to mean. We hear that we need a "bureau of personnel" and a "bureau of materiel." That is all French in name and method, and all our own bureaus are adopted and named after the French. Then let us have the French bureau of "materiel" precisely as it exists, which consolidates all industrial shops and work under the one head of "naval constructions." Its head is a "director of naval constructions"; its directing personnel is composed of "Ingenieurs des constructions navales." It includes also all ordnance workshops and fittings in navy-yards. Unlike our ordnance, theirs is manufactured by civil industry and shipped to navy-yards where it is handled and installed by the department of naval constructions. French navy-yard industry is confined to the one department, which combines every shop and tradesman under a single head; and that not a military head, nor a number of mixed military and industrial heads, but under an industrial head who is competent to take the responsibility for the things he knows, the things of his special education and training, the things of his pride and ambition, the only things by virtue of which eminent ability may permit him to rise to any sort of distinction. Not that he needs distinction and should be allowed to attain it, but that the human composition is such that the best efficiency cannot be attained by any other inducements in a system where hope of reward must be the stimulus; where neither capital, salary, nor interest, from a personal investment, are at stake. 'Individual responsibility reposing in the head who is instructed in the things he is responsible for is at the root of efficiency.' Our bureau method is pre-eminently such a method, and is the most perfect yet devised, but has become uneconomical for the plain reason that the system of the bureaus has not been readjusted to suit the natural subdivisions of the present times; until the supposedly "sharply defined duties and responsibilities of overspecialized bureaus," to adopt Captain Mahan's diction, have become interlaced, interwoven, and intertangled to such an extent as to exist only in theory and imagination, but have no semblance in reality.
The Bureaus of Construction and Repair, Steam Engineering, Equipment, and Yards and Docks should be combined under the heading of Bureau of Naval Constructions; the Bureaus of Ordnance, Supplies and Accounts, and Medicine and Surgery to remain practically as at present; excepting that, as in France, the Bureau of Naval Constructions should have cognizance of its own materials so as to control the economy in their purchase and handling.
The Bureau of Ordnance should remain as now excepting that its duties should end with the manufacture and shipment of ordnance and armor; its plans should be limited to these items and should not include any portion of the vessel to which they are applied. This is in order to unify the manufacture of plans at the Navy Department and the plans and building work at shipyards as the nearest approximate measure of economy. Strictly speaking, ordnance and armor belong to the broad division of materiel, along with the rest of the ship, by definition, and by the example of the navy furnishing us with the term; and hence, logically, should be combined with the other bureaus of materiel. In that event, it would become advisable to detail line officers as inspectors since, in this country, unlike some other countries, naval ordnance has been developed and manufactured almost purely by line officers and it would not be advantageous to take it out of their hands. This renders it less advisable to include the Bureau of Ordnance in the consolidation; but since the ordnance and armor factories are not situated so as to duplicate work of any kind, a result almost equal to consolidation will be obtained by consolidating the design and building of ship and machinery, exclusively only of ordnance and armor, under the single industrial bureau. This arrangement need not exclude the inspector of ordnance when guns are being installed on shipboard, but should require his presence, as in France.
There is sufficient evidence to believe that the Bureau of Navigation has grown too large, and that it should be separated into two bureaus, the new one to be called the Bureau of Personnel. This bureau could take over the items suggested by its name, and other kindred duties that will leave only the items concerning strategy to the Bureau of Navigation. The latter bureau would retain, of course, the Intelligence Office, the War College, the direction of the fleet, war plans, and all those functions which go to make up the sum total of "the wielding of the navy as a weapon"; and besides would inherit, from the defunct bureaus, the Naval Observatory, coaling stations, other naval stations, and in fact everything else except navy-yards, stations, and docks, engaged in the building or repair of vessels. I merely suggest, not advise, the latter subdivision. It cannot, in any wise, affect industrial administration.
The present necessity is the unification of navy-yard industry, so that it cannot duplicate itself, and so that naval industrial administration may operate in the full benefit of modern methods as developed with such eminent success in the private industries of this country. All power plants, shops, heads of departments, assistants, draftsmen, clerks, foremen, leading men, and mechanics may be combined into one set of each class or kind. The result would effect a reduction of the number of buildings in use, the working forces, and the total cost of the establishment, by an amount that would be startling to predict. The military authority should remain supreme in a commandant, but the industrial establishment, being in subjection to the military, need not be subdivided into a number of mixed administrations interwoven as now, but combined, and divorced as a pure industrial unit.
EVILS TO BE CURED.
One of the present evils of greatest moment is the unsystematic method of laying out new yard plants and the distribution of shop buildings among the various departments. The sites for the plants themselves are selected, usually, by people having an eye only to the depth of water, facilities for military protection, and the nature of the soil. The most important economic industrial considerations contained in the contour of the site and water frontage, and in the economic arrangement of shops, have seemingly had no part whatever in the establishment of our navy yard plants.
Economy in arrangement, whereby labor and material travel by the shortest route between shop and ship, is an asset which means a goodly percentage in profit as long as the plant endures. A steel plate that will travel three hundred yards from plate rack to its place on the ship's side in a poorly arranged plant, may travel only a hundred yards in its course from machine to machine in a well-arranged plant. The reduction in cost of handling is very appreciable; and if this be applied to all the multitude of articles that go to complete a modern ship, the difference in cost is considerable. The same condition obtains with labor, which is more important because more expensive. The shipfitting and joiner shops belong nearest the building slips and fitting-out berths, so that the class of men that fit and refit from shop to ship will have to walk the shortest distance; for the similar reason that the engine and boiler shops would be at the rear, as near the fitting-out berths as possible, since the engines and boilers may be built complete in the shops, and when ready may be hauled any distance by rail to the fitting-out berths. Every shop has a logical location in a shipyard, yet no shop can have its proper place by our methods. Each department seeks the main business street as centrally located as possible. Sites and shops are let in a haphazard way, and even if determined by a board the most influential member gets the most central location. In the navy-yard of my most intimate acquaintance the distance of the farthest buildings from the power-house of one department is so great that the cost of the electric-power wires is something extraordinary; one department is widely separated into two large halves by another department lying between; and the joiner shop is farthest away from slips and berths while the engine and boiler shops are nearest the slips and docks, just the reverse of where they ought to be. Yet the losses on first cost and circuitousness must appear in the figures of cost as long as the plant exists.
Another great source of loss lies in the lack of harmony that usually exists between the heads of departments. There are two sorts of inter-department administration; one, where controversy is rife, another where obliging tact prevails. It may be observed here, incidentally, that the one who wilfully enters into a squabble is a downright enemy to economy, for when at their best, heads of departments are far enough apart by the very nature of things. One department finishes its work to where another begins, and then endeavors to get the other department to supply the connecting link. The second department may have its men on a more pressing job, or may not even have obtained funds for the work in hand. The delay in connecting may be anywhere from an hour to a month. Worse than that has happened. These misconnections are very frequent, due to the simple fact that the various heads of departments have different trains of thought, and one cannot divine what the other intends to do until the time arrives. The great effort of working ahead of time in all the mass of details is not to be expected from men whose capital or income does not bind them to it, and whose salary depends on the limits of the single duties of their own department as laid down in the navy regulations. Unintentional misconnections between departments are the source of the greatest loss of time and money in the operation of the plants as they now stand. One department owns a crane, a second department is using it, while a third department waits for it. The time of making connections, getting permission, and waiting may keep a whole gang of men out of work for some time. One department builds a shop, the second department buys an elevator for it; the original plans made to fit are changed by one department without the knowledge of the other, and the elevator is found not to suit the shaft, so the floor just completed must be cut out again.
A load of steel plates arrives and must be immediately removed by one department, from the receiving station. This causes one handling. Another department has the list of plates, what they are, and who they are for, and retains it sometimes a week or two. When the list arrives the third department has to inspect them one by one to examine the inspector's mark on each. The first department doesn't find it convenient to handle them until the broken crane of the fourth department is mended to avoid rehandling them twice again. At the end of some months the inspection is completed, and the contractor has lost several months' interest on his money.
One department buys a lot of materials that it thinks the other department will need, and owing to a miscalculation of the other department's habits, the goods lie in store for an indefinite time. Two departments disagree on a matter touching both. The first one begins the work and the other writes a letter to the commandant, who refers it to the first one for his arguments. If the work is important the commandant authorizes the one he thinks is right, and forwards the papers to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for a decision to guide in future cases. If unimportant, the work may await the decision. Sometimes friction arises between two departments; they begin to make caustic remarks and endorsements to each other. The clerks, foremen, and workmen soon catch it and there is a regular blockade of the interlying work between the two. When this happens, lords of old in feudal castles were not in more impregnable fortresses than are the two belligerent heads. The warfare is waged silently by mutual understanding; each puts the other out as much as possible, and there is no power on earth to stop them except by mutual consent. The commandant seldom has evidence of its existence. If anything comes up in correspondence he settles the point at issue; if one reports the other verbally or by letter, the other always has a plausible reason to offer. It is simply impossible for one to make the other come to time, and reports are liable to cut both ways, like a two-edged sword, and are out of fashion.
Yet the general staff adherents argue that a commandant needs more power to coerce yard departments into agreement and economy! He now has all power, and no one dare disobey his order. The only right left to a head of department is to appeal to the Secretary of the Navy if he thinks the navy regulations have been violated; but he obeys the order in the meantime without question. If a commandant had the power accredited to the Czar of Russia he would be as completely dependent upon his heads of departments as he is now, unless he felt disposed to go into the details of all the work in the shops, and the accounts, of the various departments. If he had no end of authority the industry of a navy-yard would rock along in about the same old way. The evil is one of organization.
A dry-dock belongs to one department, also its operating power plant. The operation of it belongs to the second department, and if the engines and boilers become old, dilapidated and uneconomical, needing to be replaced or repaired, the first department must obtain the appropriations and make the repairs, if it approves the changes; its uninterested opinion governs, and in the meantime the second department bears on its books the unwilling losses from uneconomical operation, sometimes for a period of years.
The most unnatural scope of bureau cognizance is exemplified in the modern floating dry-dock which falls under the bureau bearing a similar name, due undoubtedly to the circumstance of a name inherited from the graving dock. The design and building of a floating dock belongs purely to naval architecture (and not to civil engineering); yet the government fails to utilize its own naval architects in such work, but pays the premiums going to the naval architects of civil industry.
Another misfit is found in the building of a new shop by one department for another. The second department begins simultaneously to procure appropriations for the machinery. First there is a duplication of drafting work. The building plans originate in the second department, defining the internal arrangement within its cognizance. These plans are remade with changes by the first department. The one department's machinery requisition goes through without a hitch while the other department's building may be held up for months after the machinery is delivered. The building may go a winter or two without heating or some other necessary facilities, while the other department's force must endure it. The building foundations may have been laid before the necessity of driving piles to support the other department's machinery becomes discovered, and when the piles are then driven the foundations are ruptured and require expensive repairs. On no kind of work is misconnection so rife, so radical, or so damaging as between the department that supplies the building, and the one that supplies the machinery and uses it. The building just completed must be mutilated with holes, underground wiring conduits, brackets, and machinery foundations to suit the needs of No. 2, which No. I could not foresee to assemble himself or to have assembled in time to make all connections; and the worst of it is No. lets the contract to a civilian contractor, No. 3. If the middle man, No. 1, built the house himself, there would be some logical excuse for his separate existence; but navy-yard shops and houses are built by private contract, as in other countries.
A contractor delivers a load of coal for department No. 1. A sample is inspected and passed by body No. 2. An order comes from department No. 3 forbidding the schooner to unload until a ship is moved from the vicinity. Department No. 4 owning the crane must be consulted to have the crane hands sent at the proper time. Inter-department correspondence ensues, until finally, after about four days, the schooner comes alongside and is unloaded with the ship, crane, and everything else standing in the same positions as when she first arrived. The loss to the contractor is four days demurrage on the schooner, and he could not get damages from the government if he tried, and the government could not fix the responsibility if it tried.
One department confers with another by letter, and gets a reply in a day or two; mails are sometimes delivered quicker in a city. Letters from business firms come to one department and are referred to the others, one at a time, for endorsement. In four to ten days the circuit is made and the original letter sometimes goes back to the business house plastered with six to ten endorsements in reply to its query. The amount of paper work is out of all proportion. The cost accounts of a manufacturing department are duplicated in the accounting department. The accounts of work done by one department for another are duplicated in both departments. Copies of contracts for one depart ment made by the purchasing department are duplicated in both, together with many contingent inspection and other papers. A head of department executes a multiplicity of orders and then becomes a paper defendant to justify his actions brought into question always after the work is done. The amount of paper work inherent in the system leaves only too little time for carrying out the real work.
There is also the commercial representative evil. Some commercial houses have representatives who visit navy-yards as constantly as any of their other customers. They convince foremen, leadingmen, clerks, chemists, officers and their assistants of the quality of their goods, and offer specifications, suggestions, and objections. Any of the latter, in some way or other, at some time or other, may be able to influence the kind or quality of the goods bought. The evils and dangers are apparent. Business houses claim, and they have, a right to discuss business with the government, and to have representations at the rejection of goods. A single department would render practicable the concentration of all business inquiries in a single office and officer.
A board of inspection also complicates the situation. There are three members, two of whom seldom see the goods they sign away, but only delay the paper work, in triplicate. The member representing the department for whom the goods are bought is the de facto inspection board and is so known to contractors and government alike; the presence of a board and all its paper machinery does not even conceal the fact, and the one member bears all the responsibility. There are six separate offices in which inspection papers and correspondence are eligible for consideration or endorsement, viz.: general storekeeper, commandant, head of department concerned, inspection board, chemist, and the representative member. The shortest possible single trip is via four of these, the return trip being the same. The time of a single trip depends on the uncertainties of messenger service, but is usually a day to a week, unless by urgent necessity a simple paper is escorted throughout the trip by a single messenger, which even then is long unless all hands happen to be in.
There is a shift of head of department and representative member for every department's inspections, which leads us into the problem of permutations and combinations to figure out what may happen to inspection matters that touch all departments, or more than one, at the same time; as naval supply fund materials, for instance.
The head of department most concerned has the final "say" in practice, and all departments being combined into one would place inspections under his direction and responsibility the same as the rest of his work; that would abridge all papers and place the work and the final "say" where they actually rest now. If there ever was an anomalous paper institution, it exists in an inspection board.
Another superfluity is the paint board, which loses time in the preparation of a lot of useless papers. Combination would replace it by a simple letter from the head of department.
Each department is not complete in itself, but may require another department to do work it cannot perform; one having no foundry may make requisition for the one with foundry to make its castings. The first department must furnish the materials while the other department does the work and transfers back the charges so the labor may be paid from the appropriations of the department having cognizance of the work. Thus the cost appears against the first department, whereas it really had no hand in controlling the amount, which may be exorbitant. This occurs constantly, and it is evident the total expense account of a department includes a portion made outside of its control and for whose excess it cannot be responsible. Another feature is illustrated in the effect of shifting cognizance from one department to another. Once, the government decided to economize by centralizing the lighting plants into a single department. The result was, the department that needed light on ship work was supplied with inadequate lights, the ancient practice of using candles grew to an unnecessary extent, and hundreds of men have stood many hours in the dark, glad at the opportunity for a rest. The authority shifting the lighting from the department that controlled its cost and operation for its own work could not have understood how its details were going to work out. With all power plants shifted and consolidated under one department as the bureaus are now adjusted, the operation and cost of power would be beyond the control of the department using it, but the cost would be charged against that department, which would be held responsible for it, notwithstanding, since this cost must have been included in the estimates, and appears on the books against it. Such reform as that is truly "straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel."
Another illustration of inter-departmental methods may be shown by the following example: An appropriation is made to build a ship, and is apportioned at Washington between the three bureaus producing the hull, machinery, and equipment. The department building the hull must be responsible for its cost. Incidentally, the building slip and launching ways must be prepared. A fourth department having no allotment must drive the piles by virtue of its cognizance as determined in the navy regulations. The hull department must require the piles to be driven by the fourth department and the latter determines all features included in the cost. The pile-driving department answers to nobody for expense, being the supreme judge of all matters touching its technical duties, while the cost is transferred back to the hull department, who must answer for it, though having no control over it. This requires the hull department to detail an inspector to watch the pile department to determine whether the men charged to the job have actually been present and properly engaged on the work as paid for. No regular inspectors having been provided for such work, this inspection is delegated to some one who is most handy; but only on large work of importance can inspection be employed, for there is so much small work going on of a similar character that it is impossible to anticipate it or to check it up after it is done; for in some cases where such charges have been transferred, it has been found that men so charged for a whole day may have been engaged on the work only an hour, or perhaps a few of them may only have handled some of the material in the shops, or may have done nothing at all on the work. This result may be quite unintentional, and due to the methods of preparing accounts; but I shall not descend into those minutia. A day never passes but what every department transfers accounts of work done for the other departments, and they are of such varied and irregular character that practically no one can be held responsible for their correctness, much less for the economy exercised in producing them. The same is true of work within the cognizance of one department which has not the shops to do it with, and must request another department to do it, with the same transferring of accounts and uncertainty of costs.
Is this evidence enough, or shall other instances be cited?
How should it be remedied?
Shall the commandant be vested with authority to violate the navy regulations defining bureau cognizance, or shall he be permitted to violate the appropriation act and charge the work to the most convenient appropriations, to avoid the paper and other evils? If so, will some one venture to explain in what features will navy-yard administration be benefited thereby.
If not that, then how will a general staff, composed of military administrators, line officers only, interposed between the present bureaus and the Secretary of the Navy, ameliorate the situation?
There is no possible solution other than consolidation.
At the moment of this writing, out of a yard force of 1426 workmen, at the yard I have in mind, 761 of them belong to the construction and repair department, and 665 to all the other departments combined. At all navy-yards in full operation the construction and repair department force is usually greater than all the others combined, and always has been. The reason is because navy-yards exist principally for the construction and repair of ships. To consolidate the whole is not far to go.
Consolidation would cure, also, the spasmodic economy evil: one department has no money to do absolutely necessary work, while another department cannot find enough work to expend all its funds; one can obtain all the material it needs, another has to take what it can get; one can supply motors for all its power on shipboard, another cannot afford generators to give the crew electric lights; one can supply mahogany furniture for every need, another cannot replace an article of furniture that falls to pieces from old age; one is worked to the limit of mental and bodily strain to reduce the costs, another rocks along easily, waiting for the quitting bell to ring. One wastes what the other saves.
One of the most expensive luxuries indulged in by the government is a haphazard administrator, a merely accomplished officer, whose only necessity is to know enough to keep out of trouble, and perhaps, after some experience, to accumulate enough data to engage in a controversy! He is putty in the hands of his foremen. A ship arrives, to be overhauled. The foremen make his estimates for him, and in so doing they determine the limits of the estimates. Shall this work be repaired or renewed? The foreman says it must be made new, with suitable gestures! The foreman's judgment usually governs the totals of the estimates. One who is not in a position to know better than his foremen must retreat when the latter present arguments which he knows not how to refute. Likewise the foremen determine the actual limits of the work undertaken, which may overrun the estimates. Foremen are from among the workmen, who are their friends and companions, and it is but natural to look out for new work and hold fast to that in hand. Otherwise, it means discharges for the tradesmen, which is not a popular idea among them. Usually when an old ship gets safely moored alongside a navy-yard for a general overhauling she may bid farewell to the world until there is other work in sight.
One must know more than his foremen and have the willpower of his convictions in order to be able to limit the work to its proper amount and cost, and he must be very energetic and diplomatic in exemplifying his superiority by a vigorous line of action. When several hundred expensive mechanics are engaged on a single ship, at a cost of several hundred dollars a day, more money can be sunk in shorter time than in any other way at a navy-yard, especially if the workmen are holding on to the job like grim death, with no other work in sight, with a figurehead in charge of the department. If the electric lights go out and the men stand idle for an hour, that is of little consequence where the work of repairs may be drawn out several months without half trying.
Recently the captain of a ship forwarded to Washington a letter accompanied by a sample copy of each of the different bureaus' blank forms for survey, his contention being that all these forms should be reduced to a single one applying to all bureaus alike. The stores belonging to one bureau must be inchided on a separate form supplied by that bureau, and the bureaus' forms differ on account of the differences of the methods and usages of the bureaus themselves. The consolidation of the bureaus handling material would reduce these forms to unity, and thus ameliorate a number of kindred inconveniences.
Another evil which combination would cure is to be found in the prevention of improvements to shipboard machinery where such improvement would transfer its cognizance to another bureau. Thus, steam auxiliaries have refused, at times, for such a reason, to give way to motors, long after the auxiliary steam engine stands discredited everywhere else. The limit of bureau cognizance influences and injures the design of a ship in various details, and stands in the way of many improvements.
Likewise, no one may encompass, and be responsible for, the design of a ship as a whole. The art of shipbuilding is amply provided for in point of quality of workmanship, for where a poor job of work occurs, the person who did it can always be definitely located; but the science of shipbuilding has no connecting link provided to unite the interdependent functions governing the mobility of a ship. The speed, vibrations, coal-consumption, radius of action, economy of power, water consumption, and horsepower of a ship depend upon three separate and interrelated things, viz.: the model, the propeller, and the engines. On the model depend the speed, vibrations, wake coefficient, bow and stern waves, and horsepower. The functions of the propeller influence and depend upon the model, wake coefficient, speed, revolutions, slip, vibrations, depth of water, coal and water consumption, radius of action, indicated horsepower, and economy of operation. On the engines depend the speed, vibrations, horsepower, coal and water consumption, revolutions, radius of action, and economy of operation. The bureau that designs the hull has no "say" with respect to the propeller and engines, and the bureau that designs the latter has no say about the hull; so that no competent person is provided for, or permitted, by the government to design these three component parts, or to adjust them to secure the best results, or to locate the errors in the completed vessel.
If a new ship fails to attain the desired speed, it may be due to the insufficient horsepower or inefficient propeller, of one bureau; or to the lines of hull, foul bottom, displacement, trim, or lack of depth of water at trial, of another bureau's consideration. If there are excessive vibrations it may be due to an unbalanced engine, an improperly designed propeller, or a wrong location of the engines with respect to the hull's nodes of vibration, of one bureau's cognizance; or to nodes of hull, lines of run, or breaks in continuity of flexibility of hull, of the other bureau's cognizance. If the vessel is uneconomical and has a large coal and water consumption, and a small radius of action, it may be due to a foul bottom, wrong propeller, excessive steam consumption of engine, or inefficient boilers. There is no one in a position to locate the fault and denote whether it belong to one bureau or the other; nor is anyone in a position to profit by the experience, and correct future designs. There is greater reason to combine the design of the whole ship under one head than to combine the two departments building it. A ship is too small to separate its design or its building under any but one head. It may have been necessary forty-two years ago when the shipwright knew nothing of steam or electricity, and the separate professions had to be employed to obtain the whole; but at this epoch when a warship has merged into a machinery plant where hull, engines, boilers, dynamos, and all the other fittings are formed into shape by the same or similar machinery, from iron, steel, brass, copper, by the same class of mechanics, there no longer remains an excuse for unnatural subdivisions descended from the olden times. The whole field of the shipbuilding profession to-day is no more than a specialized branch of mechanical engineering—steam engines, boilers, electricity, and naval architecture. Not even so diversified as the mechanical engineering of commerce, which encompasses the broad field covered by the great variety and differences in machinery, plants, and methods employed in the private industries of the country; but merely the comparatively narrow field of mechanical engineering applying to a shipyard plant only, and the architecture of naval vessels and machinery only; merely the same profession now covered by the curriculum of a single school, and encompassed by a single diploma. There is no real barrier to the achievement of modern methods in our tape-ridden navy-yards.
THE GENERAL STOREHOUSE.
The general storehouse was established in navy-yards some seventeen years ago. Prior to its establishment each department had its own storehouse just as it now has its own plant. This concentration of stores under one department was the first move indicative of the vague notion of combine now growing more confirmed in all quarters as the years pass by.
On what pretexts this centralization of stores was made is immaterial. It may have been on the score of economy of handling and storage, but there have also been rumors to the effect that its object was to correct abuses in the improper or unauthorized use of government goods for private purposes. The latter statement is based entirely on hearsay from the old-time civilian employes of navy-yards, who may have gained erroneous impressions. Anyway it makes no difference since I wish to deal with the actual conditions as they now exist.
The practical effect of this concentration was precisely the same as the shifting of electric lighting, or power plants, or any other shop from one department to another, or from all other departments to the one; since each department still retains cognizance, though not possession, of its own stores. The general storekeeper has not the ordering nor the disposition of the stores, and there is a great barrier of red-tape between each department and its materials by the circumstance of their safe keeping in the hands of a department, independent of any other, which is able to shield any action causing inconvenience or delay by citing a paragraph of the encumbered navy regulations governing the subject. It follows the same rule that is of universal application, that shifting a shop from one department to another, or shifting all similar shops to one department, merely complicates and damages the service; first, by placing a department's work and costs beyond its control; and, second, by causing a duplication of accounts and papers between the two, besides placing all official action subject only to correspondence between the two, through the commandant. The conditions would be similar throughout if each department were located in a different portion of the same neighborhood of a city, and were limited in action to correspondence, each paper going from one department to another always through an office in another separate location; except that city correspondence is more pressing, and city mails are better regulated and are not dependent upon irregular messenger service as is a navy-yard. I am speaking only of the usual routine methods that are in vogue during the long years of peace when the funds are being quietly expended. In war, enthusiasm and patriotism fill the gap and permit expedition and efficiency; but in war special orders abridge the navy regulations and permit purchases even over telephone by any department, and the papers are made out later. In war a department obtains facility of control over its own stores, by special orders, in violation of the regulations, that cannot be obtained in peace.
If a general storehouse now cannot make an inventory of its stock within three years, it is because it has so many duplicated accounts in connection with the materials of the various yard departments and the so-called inspection board that it is irretrievably lost beneath a wilderness of papers, where it must trace its steps through an army of clerks, and record each movement in a library of account books. If all these papers were accidentally burned, an inventory could be made within a few months. There is no short cut from the head office to the stores themselves. The people who handle them must ask the department that uses them, by method of correspondence, survey, inspection, or otherwise, what and how many they are, what they can be used for, what their value is, and what shall be done with them. If there are materials on hand that it will take twenty-five years to use up, it is because the methods of guessing what all the departments will need are so haphazard and uncertain as to bear no evidence, or claim, of a knowledge of the work for which the materials are destined. If an industrial department must employ a large swarm of clerks, it is because a different bureau prescribes the forms and methods by which its accounts shall be kept.
If deliveries of materials lie in the receiving station a week or two it may be because the inspection papers are being prepared in the storehouse; or if the goods have to be moved out of the way, they may require to be handled and weighed twice owing to the subdivisions in these papers appearing on their arrival; or if the materials should happen to be in excess of requirements, it is not discovered until the inspection papers arrive, which requires the acceptance of the excess or a rehandling from storehouse to shipping station at government expense. There is no one who can receive, inspect, and store materials immediately on arrival. The contractor's bill may not have been received, it takes time to prepare the storehouse papers, and when prepared and started on the long journey it requires anywhere from a day to a week for an inspection call to make the routine rounds and connect with the inspector through the office that ironically bears the name of inspection board. But if a chemical test is involved, another set of correspondence begins via the inspection board to the chemist, and with all the departments to be served no one is in a position to set the sequence of chemical tests as the needs warrant, so that the most needed goods may be, as likely as not, the last inspected. The result is that, from whatever causes of misconnections and delays, the navy regulations are punctiliously observed, while the departments are not satisfactorily served; and many times gangs of men are kept idle for want of materials already delivered but shielded by paper work. It is of frequent occurrence that many important chemical tests have to be waived, and the goods accepted as they are, by the necessity of carrying on the current work.
I will not go through the special class of uncertainties connected with the naval supply fund, but will illustrate by a single example: A department puts in requisition for a certain lot of materials. When it reaches Washington it is approved and transferred for purchase under naval supply fund. When delivered at the navy-yard an inspector of another department gets the inspection call, as likely as not, since nearly all the departments use similar materials throughout, and the department making the inspection welcomes its arrival, and needing it, draws it from store and uses it. The department that ordered it waits a long while, until it grows impatient, then makes inquiry of the storehouse, and finds the materials have been drawn and used long ago by another department.
As to the better safe-keeping of stores in a general storehouse the chances are equal. The general storekeeper must account for all stores on the books, verbatim. The loopholes for missing stores are small in the main storehouse. The safe-keeping feature is only too ideally exemplified. A head of department must sign a daily package of papers in a continuous string transferring materials from the storehouse to the workshops. Each paper bears only materials for a single job order, and the number of papers depends on the number of job orders multiplied by the number of foremen, multiplied by the number of instalments each foreman finds it convenient to make. Nothing can be drawn but what is charged to a job order at its transfer. A foreman can never tell exactly how much he will need. If any materials are left over from the job, as is nearly always the case, they remain charged to the job forever, they are practically expended and are off the books; and I see no reason why they could not be made away with by foremen or workmen who should feel so disposed. And if foremen should desire to undertake such a thing, they could draw an unlimited quantity of materials in this way, which might disappear, and it would be practically impossible to detect it. The only way would be to establish a system of watchmen, or a miniature storehouse in each department with a special storeman, or be able to discern the excess in cost of the finished articles which, while impossible, would be no proof. The materials cannot be checked up after the paint is spread out on the ship's side, or the steel is worked into a bulkhead. In other words, it depends solely on whether the men are honest, by any system that can be devised, and it seems that the goods would be safer in separate storehouses under five heads of departments, as they once were, than they are as now distributed into the hands and safe-keeping of the forty different foremen in charge. Let that be as it may, the departments as of old would be better served than now. However, I do not wish to deal with ancient, but with modern, methods as in a private shipyard.
The single department as combined should have a single storehouse absolutely under its control, and should have undivided cognizance of the materials therein. Then only such articles as are needed may be ordered, the quantities to depend upon the projected work, and if then there is surplus or excess it may be checked against the total quantities needed as determined from the plans and the finished work. Shipyards order only the materials they may need as determined from their plans and specifications and there is a natural accounting, or check, at the end if any pieces are missing or left over. But in our naval supply fund great quantities of stores are accumulated for everybody in general and nobody in particular. If foremen draw out three times more stores than they need, the general storekeeper doesn't know it, having no notion of their needs; the head of department has such a great mass of papers to sign covering them in such detail he cannot discern it from the transfer papers; and the costs of finished jobs are so involved and erratic that there is no practical method of locating leaks. The system does not totalize, on an expending department's books, the materials drawn, and check them against those that were needed by the plans and specifications. That would be working backwards, at great loss of time and money to no purpose, perhaps; but merely to obtain an accounting which a modern shipyard obtains so easily by the straightforward method of ordering only what will be needed.
Now let us examine what the so-called concentration of stores into a general storehouse has actually effected. It merely shifted the control of stores from all departments to the one, but not the stores themselves. It concentrated new general stores, liable to be used by several departments, into two or three storehouses; but particular stores pertaining solely to a single department, such as equipment and ordnance stores, and furniture, certain classes of lumber, etc., etc., have been located in separate buildings forming a part of, or located in the vicinity of, the buildings of the department using them. The result is that the various storehouses and stores are scattered throughout the length and breadth of the navy-yard to the farthest outposts on both ends, and nothing is less concentrated than stores. Of course navy-yards differ from each other in some respects, but I refer to a particular one in mind. In the storehouses are a separate lot of clerks responsible to the general storekeeper only, whose actions, delays, time, and cost are beyond the direction and control of the department having cognizance of the stores; yet the latter cannot touch these stores without first transcending the paper-work barriers intervening, and it must bear the costs incidental to the delays in obtaining stores. In other words, the centralization of stores exists only in theory; and the term becomes ironical whenever there is friction between the employes or heads of the two departments concerned. As it is, the economy and expedition of navy-yard work are subservient to storehouse methods and accounts. It is only by means of a combined single yard department, having control of its own stores, that the rational subserviency of the accounts to the actual work could be effected.
There is another feature attached to the cost of handling stores the effect of which is to sidetrack this cost to a separate account, so that it never appears against the materials handled. Thus the total cost figures of a navy-yard-built ship do not include the handling of its materials after delivery until it comes under the authority of the department using it, after the paper work is completed. These cost figures can never be compared with the similar figures of a private shipyard, and there is no criterion by which to analyze or judge them; so they may be excessive or not, and nobody will ever be the wiser. A number of items, such as office expenses, clerical work, etc., etc., do not appear against a ship being built or repaired; so that, on the whole, the actual total cost is greater than the figures go to show. I do not refer to a ship like the Connecticut, where special regulations are in force, but to the usual navy-yard work.
In other words, the reported cost of navy-yard work has been proved excessive; but the actual cost is greater still, and very much greater when gauged by private shipyard measures, since the latter charge machinery, plant, maintenance, office and clerical expenses, handling materials, and in fact everything to the current work in hand, which navy-yards do not.
On the subject of requisitions for materials, it would take too long to enter into the various details of duplication. Suffice it to say that a number of copies of every requisition must be made by the industrial department, for the storehouse paper-work, the only requirement of such extra labor being merely to facilitate business,—without them the former would have to wait longer for its materials.
Likewise, the operation of assembling a ship's stores would require a separate chapter, of which I will give only a skeleton outline. The ship's stores are defined by the allowance lists, each bureau having a separate one. The industrial department makes up the allowance list, the sizes of tools, etc., having no regard to those which might be in store and would do quite as well if only the contents of the other man's storehouse were known. When the assemblage begins S sends to I its copy of the list. (S signifies storehouse; I signifies industrial department). I then checks the items it will manufacture, and returns it to S via commandant. S then checks off all the other items that are in store, and these articles are set aside for the vessel. Then the remaining articles on the list are set aside for purchase, and a new list of these is made up and sent from S to I via C as before. I then finds that a number of the articles not in store, and ordered to be purchased, consists of heterogeneous small sizes and quantities of goods that no contractor would furnish except at an exorbitant price, and that I can supply from its own stock already drawn from store for current work. I then revises the purchase list, excluding these items, and returns to S via C for correction. S corrects list and returns to I via C; whereupon I prepares requisition and specifications, fifteen copies, and forwards them via C to S, who effects the purchase in a roundabout Way which we will not follow up.
Take a concrete example: a modern ship, not two years in commission, was delivered to the government, by her contractors, at a navy-yard. The first correspondence starting the assemblage of her stores was started between the S and I departments 15 months before the vessel was due to be delivered. At her delivery the main bulk of her supplies purchased by requisition had not yet been received, and it was not until 4 ½ months after she had been delivered and put into commission that she had received her complete outfit of stores. This delay was due entirely to the backward-and-forth paper-work between the two departments, and the chances are that the government could not locate the responsibility in the right place if it tried.
Consolidation would end this useless, inefficient, and very expensive clerical work that requires special talent in at least one of the departments in order to keep the lists from becoming inextricably entangled.
Consolidation of yard storehouse with the single yard department is the only salvation,—though a storehouse should still be retained under the paymaster, having to do only with the usual provisions, clothing, small stores, coal, and all contingent stores of the pay department proper, which pertain distinctly to the needs of ships in commission; such stores are foreign to navy yard work, and they should not be confused with it.
THE FIFTEEN DAYS' LEAVE EVIL.
One of the gravest of evils is the result of a law giving workmen fifteen days leave per annum with pay. The government's generosity is commendable, and the move is in the right direction. Like the older countries, we are accumulating more holidays, more leisure, and less strenuousness in our habitual over-time rush after the almighty dollar. The quicker we appropriate new holidays the happier and longer-lived we will become as a people. The gift of fifteen days leave with pay to navy-yard workmen is one thing, to which there is no objection; but the method of applying it is laden with the very salt of inefficiency. As a rule the men get their leave whenever they desire it, and may be absent fifteen separate, different, days. In the large yard department employing 760 men, if each man takes leave six different times a year, on an average, the total number of requests for leave will be 4560, or an average of 15 a day; with the chance of doubling that number. If a head of department should make 15 to 30 investigations a day to see if the men could be spared, at least half the day would be consumed. As a matter of fact they get leave about as often as they ask for it; consequently the daily misconnections, and the filling in of unexpected vacancies, interrupt the continuity of the work; but worst of all, the absences of foremen are more heavily felt, inasmuch as their places cannot be satisfactorily filled. Their work in conjunction with other foremen, and their more important operations, must await their return. With the number of foremen-in-charge going and coming all the year round, the workmen doing the same, it may be perceived that the damage to the government is not in any wise represented by the sum of money appropriated to pay their 15 days leave.
The remedy would be to give one leave per man per annum, of 15 days or less, after each year of his employment, or to close the navy-yard 15 days, or to repeal the law.
This evil is not due to the bureau system, but it is mentioned so as to cover the whole ground.
PRACTICABILITY OF CONSOLIDATION.
Having examined the various conditions in detail we are now prepared to perceive the economic necessities of combination as may be classified under the following sub-heads:
(1) The economical outlay, arrangement, and first cost of the plant.
(2) The economical power operation of the plant.
(3) The economical administration of industrial labor.
(4) The economical purchase and handling of materials.
That is the sum total of navy-yard needs, and there are no obstacles so far as the rearrangement of personnel is concerned. As with shops and workmen, a surplus of superintending officials may be dispensed with. The workmen may be combined with facility, as with clerks and draftsmen, creating a surplus all along the line. Also every shop in the plant may be combined into a single one of each class or kind, excepting storehouses occupying several buildings. There is only one thing in a navy-yard that cannot reasonably be combined, and strange as it may seem, it is the power plants. Nothing more nor less.
In a new navy-yard everything could be laid out in consolidated form, of course, but in navy-yards already established it could be only by the merest accident that the power plants would permit of consolidation. In the navy-yard I have in mind one power plant supplies long-distance lighting, heating, and power. The main generators are alternating current, monophase, high voltage, with transformers; the connecting motors are the induction type. A series generator operates the arc lights. Another department's plant is direct-current, low voltage, connected with many shops full of a great number of new and expensive direct current motors. A third department has direct-current, of different voltage still, with motors corresponding. It is impracticable to apply the current from one plant to the motors of the others.
In order, then, to consolidate into a single plant a large outfit of new and expensive machinery, including engines, boilers, generators, switchboards, and wiring of the other plants would have to be sacrificed. The total loss in this way, and the first cost of a new supplementary plant, would extend into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. New and expensive machinery cannot be thrown away simply to gratify an ideal notion of arrangement. It would not be permissible to completely centralize the power except by gradual steps as the old plant and motors become worn out. As it is, everything except power plants could be consolidated in a few months and carry on the regular work uninterruptedly; the power plants could best become centralized gradually within the next ten years.
Let us examine into the effect of shifting all power plants to the cognizance and control of a single department as now existing without consolidating the departments. The department supplying power to the other departments must charge the latter for the power they use, so that the manufactured articles will bear the cost of the power required in their production, and so the amount may be paid out of the appropriations authorizing the manufactured articles. That will start a system of transfer accounts between the power department and each of the others, where the using departments must certify to the labor and materials consumed by the power department on the appropriations and job orders of the former.
This would require that each department have separate meters for measuring the electric light and power used, entailing a duplication of clerical force in each to check the amounts, with the corresponding shifting of paper-work backwards and forth through the commandant. While a general appropriation may be used to cover the cost of heating and lighting buildings, residences, and the navy-yard dependencies, yet it is absolutely essential that the money appropriated to build or repair a ship must include the cost of the power used in its production, which requires the application of the above details of preparing and transferring the accounts.
The above is true of electric power, but when it comes to steam, pneumatic, and hydraulic power, there is no possible way of measuring it after generation. The division of quantities used between departments would be hypothetical, and the cost of the finished work would be uncertain and inaccurate, placing it on a par with the other incongruities inherent in our present multifarious system.
The most important feature in this power consolidation idea has been lost sight of entirely. The cost of the power itself is of little consequence compared to the labor which the power serves. In the manufactured article the labor cost is 91 to 97% as against the power cost of 3 to 9% in our navy-yards. In shipyards the ratio of power to labor is 2 to 4% only. The cost of power is insignificant by comparison. Therefore, the system employed should avoid the need of clerical work to prepare and transfer accounts. But by all means, first and foremost, the department employing the great bulk of labor should control absolutely the power and lights for the service of its own workmen, not for the sake of the insignificant power cost itself, but in order to provide and shift it with facility to accommodate the work, so the labor dependent upon it may remain continuously employed; for if men remain idle awaiting blown fuses, or circuit breaks, or accidents, or improvements in another department beyond control, the cost of the work mounts more rapidly than any sort of power cost alone could account for.
Power concentration in any present department is, thus, not only impracticable, but it would only aggravate existing evils!
With all departments combined into one, existing power plants could be reduced to one, two, or three, in number, and centralized gradually in ten to fifteen years; only in new navy-yards could they be centralized at once under a single roof, and such an installation could be so made that the power cost would not be over 2% of the cost of labor in the entire plant, as in modern industrial establishments.
It is evident that nothing short of a complete plant consolidation under a single yard department will suffice. With such consolidation, a new yard could build an ideal power plant under a single roof consisting of two units side by side. The smaller unit would be for heating and lighting only, to run night and day, operated by separate labor and materials, and charged to a separate account and appropriation: the larger unit to generate the shipyard power, operated separately, so the cost might be prorated among the job-orders of shops using power. Also, the switchboard should be able to throw either electric circuit on either unit to provide against breakdowns, or extraordinary and war-time emergencies. A navy-yard with its hospital, barracks, dispensary, guard-houses, etc., etc., is a combined village and industrial plant, and is different from a shipyard in the item of heating and lighting night and day; and this village cost must not be confused with shipyard accounts.
THE NAVY DEPARTMENT.
Efficient navy-yard industry having been provided for in the foregoing, we are now prepared to consider the Navy Department itself. Whatever is best for navy-yard administration is best for the Navy Department, since the real battleground on which the funds are expended is the navy-yard which determines the economy and efficiency of expenditures. The Navy Department is only a reflection on paper of what navy-yards and shipyards do; it only obtains the lump sums for expenditures, gives general plans and directions, and criticises results effected elsewhere.
The readjustment and consolidation of bureaus is necessary, aside from any features connected with the military administrative needs of the Navy Department which might seem to warrant such a body as a general staff; and while touching upon that subject let us examine the meaning and use of such a body.
In the first place as to the name selected, we of the staff corps prefer that a body of unadulterated line officers should not be termed any kind of staff. It sounds too much like hollow mockery. We do not wish to lose our own identity, however insignificant it may be; so pray search for any other name among the long list that Admiral Luce gives as being equally satisfactory. Advisory board or strategy board would be a more suitable title. The title of navy board would be more distinctive and appropriate. General staff is too confusing with the army. A staff of officers means essentially a body in which every corps, or profession, or branch of the staff, is represented. A commanding general must have such a staff to avoid giving an impracticable order or one whose details might work out differently from what he would desire. He sees through the eyes of his expert staff, and if one profession is omitted from his staff, one of his eyes is blind; if he has only line officers on his staff, he is one-eyed, so to speak. We need no one-eyed general staff in the Navy Department.
Let us consider the question as to whether a navy board, properly constituted, could not be made beneficial.
THE NAVY BOARD.
The Admiral of the Navy,
Chief of Bureau of Personnel, Rear Admiral;
Chief of Bureau of Navigation, Rear Admiral;
Chief of Bureau of Ordnance, Rear Admiral;
Chief of Bureau of Construction and Repair, Chief Constructor;
Chief of Bureau of Supplies and Accounts, Paymaster-General.
The above gives a composition of the necessary and essential elements required in a working board to consider all matters military and industrial, in peace or war. The surgeon-general and the commandant of the marine corps have been omitted only because their duties are such as to require their presence elsewhere in routine work, and because they are not essential to the board except on rarer occasions when the action touches upon matters concerning their departments. To omit them from the board would be unfair and damaging to the government's interests, since the very fact alone would put them at a great disadvantage in representing their departments. Therefore it is essential that they become members of the board subject to a call by the board only whenever matters under their departments are considered; and also, as a safeguard to secure their rights, they should become members at any time at their own request to consider anything concerning their departments. By this arrangement there is a majority of line officers to act on the military functions of the fleet, as well as to determine the types of ships and all other matters.
This board consists of a representative of every branch, none of the government's eyes are blind, and the board has at its fingers' ends all the knowledge of the navy, which prevents an action being taken whose effect on any branch was not known or thought of at the time. None others than heads of bureaus are experts in the true sense of the word. The object is not to have some other man just as smart, who can look up the matters that require action. The question is to have the man at hand who is familiar with the detail workings of the present business of his bureau, and has them in his mind immediately available and ready for use; and only a head of bureau knows its inner operations and policies. A different person on the board might run a policy over the bureau counter to that of the chief of bureau, unless human nature should have misgivings; and any system that opens wide the door to the operation of counter-policies out of pure rivalry is in a condition to cause friction, useless paper-work, extra labor on all hands, and altogether, inefficiency.
Captain Mahan says "Military capacity of a very high order may go no further than to say, what is needed in a ship, or a gun, is such and such qualities; but it no less has a right to demand that its opinions on this practical matter should be ascertained and duly heeded." Captain Mahan did not say that the combatant officers should design, manufacture, and wield the fleet and the entire naval establishment. He means that the sportsman shall select his gun, but not necessarily design the instrument, or manufacture it. He means that it requires both an expert tailor and a man of taste to exchange ideas in order to produce a stylish suit of clothes satisfactory to both concerned; and they must get together and talk it over, but not arrange it by correspondence. Like a suit of clothes, a ship is made to order, but a ship is somewhat more intricate, and requires close consultation all the more essentially, which is the object for which a single board is created. Furthermore, expert knowledge is needed in the navy board not only in the creation of the fleet, its design and manufacture in peace, but also in its operation in war. As complete a knowledge of the qualities of the ships is needed as of the individuals among the personnel who command them. As complete information of the capabilities and limitations of navy-yards is needed as of the supplies of the fleet or any other quality or force on which the strategy and operations of the fleet are dependent. And who would pose as an expert in the purchase and assemblage of supplies for the fleet besides the paymaster-general? The fleet is powerless without supplies, and is crippled without navy-yards. The composition of the navy board, as above outlined, is the essential and logical one, where all interests and professions are represented, and where no order can be issued in ignorance of its effect in all the details of the establishment.
The navy board is supposed to supplant both the general board and the board on construction, and would seem advisable if for no other reason than to permit of harmony, to prevent policy rivalry, and to obtain a single solution, instead of two, for every problem.
As to the idea of reverting to the British Admiralty method by the adoption of an executive board, or general staff, that notion is as antiquated as the British themselves believe it to be.
Bearing on this subject, I will quote from a recent editorial appearing in Engineering (London) which not only gives an analysis of the inner workings of the British Admiralty, but replies to Captain Mahan's magazine article in such a way as to indicate that Captain Mahan may be taken to mean other things that the italicised version the general staff adherents would seem to make it appear.
"There is no one to whom we are more indebted for our revived interest in the Navy than the distinguished American officer, Captain A. T. Mahan, U. S. N. In his writings he has achieved the rare success of being at once informing and entertaining. He has a genius for his subject, and there is no more distinctive mark of genius than the power to interest and instruct at the same time. His latest contribution is an article on 'The Principles of Naval Administration,' which appears in the current issue of the National Review. In it the procedure followed in this country and the United States are contrasted, and, like a good citizen would wish to do, Captain Mahan is able to indicate his preference for the procedure of his native land. For our own part we fail to see that there is any considerable difference between the methods of Whitehall and Washington, though our own procedure is so chaotic that it is quite impossible to say what is and what is not the rule.
"Captain Mahan lays down the very sensible principle that 'efficiency of result will be better secured by individual responsibility than by collective responsibility.' The expression may be taken as axiomatic; but for its practical application it is necessary that individuals should be responsible for the thing they know, and that their responsibility should be accompanied by reward for well-doing, or punishment for shortcomings. In America, the Secretary of the Navy is unquestionably responsible.' When in 1798 a high-handed act of oppression on the part of the French Revolutionary Government brought home to the young American Republic the need for a navy—a need the nation had up to then endeavoured to ignore—the office of the Secretary of the Navy was established by law, and the Secretary was the Naval Administration. He was not only responsible, but had to give personal attention to various and trivial details of most diverse character.' Naturally such a burden could not be borne by one man, as the war of 1812 very distinctly proved. There was therefore constituted a Board of Navy Commissioners, but the members were placed explicitly under the superintendence of the Secretary, to act as his agent; indeed, to quote Captain Mahan, subordination could scarcely be more distinctly affirmed.' Later the board system disappeared, giving place to that of bureaus, mutually independent; but the paramount authority of the Secretary in his office remained, and still remains, unimpaired; he having 'sole control,' and his being the single responsibility' as representative of the President.
"Our own Naval Administration closely follows this procedure in effect, at any rate, so far as the unrestricted control of the paramount chief is concerned. It is true that in place of bureaus, with chiefs independent of each other, we have a collective board; but the First Lord can act independently of the other members, and, so long as he is supported by the Cabinet, is practically untrammelled in his control. Our system is, however, inferior, in that it is, to a degree, amorphous. There is no real separation of the duties of the Lords of the Admiralty; they are not the heads of departments rigidly defined; the operations they superintend are closely inter-related.' This happy constitution of the Board'—to quote the same authority, a naval officer of experience—'enables it to handle a mass of business now grown to vast complexity, without splitting it up into over-specialised departments, presided over by independent chiefs, with duties and offices sharply defined.'
"Nothing could be more admirably devised, supposing the object to be to submerge all responsibility. As an amicable arrangement among a family party, in which all are tolerant of the failings of others, it is perfect; but that is not exactly what the country wants, nor is it conducive to naval efficiency. The American bureau system, in which the shortcomings in any one section may be brought home to the chief, is far preferable, as, we think, every one experienced in business relations will allow. As Captain Mahan says, 'the American plan fixes the very strictest individual responsibility in the Secretary and in his principal subordinates, the chiefs of bureaus. His duties are universal and supreme; theirs are sharply defined and mutually independent.'
"So far, as between the English and the American systems, Captain Mahan has common-sense on his side; but when we come to consider the matter in detail, it is difficult to see how we can fix responsibility on the head of the chief person nominally responsible, be he First Lord or Secretary. In both cases the appointment is of uncertain duration, depending on political exigencies, and the incumbent of either office generally comes into power without training or previous experience. It is useless to make anyone responsible for things of which he has no knowledge. If a man insists on his cook driving his carriage, or his coachman cooking his dinner, he has only himself to blame if he has to go hungry, or finds himself in a ditch. It would be the height of injustice to blame either of his misemployed servants. So it is with a nation and its First Lord of the Admiralty, or Secretary of the Navy, as the case may be. Supposing we were, unhappily, to find ourselves involved in a big naval war, and our commanders proved to be unskilful, or our ships were proved to be of inferior design and construction to those of our enemy, would any sane man want to hang Lord Selborne or even Lord Goschen? If the appointment to the management of the Navy were a permanent one, we might, perhaps, say: 'You ought to have exercised a wiser discretion in the selection of your subordinates;' but even that would be a little unfair, considering the man had never been trained to the technicalities of the business.
"It is this bringing home of responsibility to the back that should bear it which is at the root of efficiency. Happily, afloat it is not difficult, but in administration it is a most complex problem; but until it is solved the nation must spend millions in vain, and then not be as prepared as it should be against attack. Captain Mahan tells us there are ' two great oppositions inherent in naval administration—civil versus military.' As matters are at present arranged we are in agreement with this, but our answers would be that this conflict of authority—necessarily a weakness— is the result of, and naturally inherent to, chaotic administration. To evolve order it is necessary to make an orderly division of administrative functions, and when this has been done, responsibility may be fixed by giving to different officials the various duties they are competent, by training and instruction, to undertake. There are two broad divisions—not to be confused in naval administration—namely, the production of the fleet and the use of the fleet."
* * * * *
"It is needless to say that such an orderly system would necessitate great changes in existing methods. At present we have at the head of the constructive and engineering departments at Whitehall a naval officer—the Controller of the Navy. He is the superior of the Director of Naval Construction and the Engineer-in-Chief, not only in regard to design, but in the carrying out of work. Again, the dockyards are governed by a naval officer—the Admiral-Superintendent—who naturally is quite uninstructed in carrying out the work which he is supposed to control, and for which he is responsible. In both cases—that of the Controller and of the Admiral-Superintendent—the appointment is for a limited period, a circumstance which makes any supervision they may be supposed to exercise over manufacturing operations, and for which they are nominally responsible, of a more shadowy nature."
* * * * *
"Any proposal to divorce actual production from military control may be looked on by some as so unprecedented as not to be safely entertained; but as a matter of fact it would only be going back to the earliest method of naval administration, such as was in vogue when the Royal Navy was first formed. Captain Mahan himself tells us that historically the institution and development of naval administration has been essentially a civil process. In the reign of King John there was a single official, the clerk of the ships; and he alone stood charged with all the duties connected with the maintenance of the King's ships. In those days ships were ships; there were no broad distinction, such as has grown up since, with ever-increasing emphasis, between a merchant vessel and a fighting ship. That made naval administration a comparatively simple problem. In the reign of Henry VIII the division between fighting and mercantile vessels had become so defined, owing chiefly to the advance in artillery, that it was thought advisable to establish a board of five officers, among whom were distributed the various administrative duties; but these officers were all civil functionaries. Later on, under the Stuarts, the Navy Board was formed, the work being done under the superintendence of the Sovereign, directly or through a minister. The head of the Navy, as a military force, was the Lord High Admiral; but, we are told, in early days that officer was not necessarily expert in naval material.
"The Duke of York, afterwards James II—who, as has been recently said, was a good seaman, if a bad King—became Lord High Admiral, and took control of the Navy Board. Here, it would seem, was the origin of the system, which has lasted to the present day, in virtue of which the military branch absorbs all control, both in the direction and the management of the Fleet; for when the Duke of York was deprived of his position, an Admiralty Board, military in character, succeeded to the authority that he had established.
"There were, however, for some time after two boards, one of the Admiralty and the other of the Navy, one military and the other civil, and though the former was the superior, the Civil Board succeeded in maintaining a position which has been characteristic as of more than semi-independence.
"The subsequent supremacy of the military element, such as we see in the present day, was not at first such an anomaly as it is now. Shipbuilding then was a compartively simple matter. Science had not taken the place it now occupies in the production of war material, and in regard to the propelling machinery—masts and sails—the naval officer was the chief expert. A board of naval officers might therefore be entrusted not only with the designing of ships, but in a large measure with the details of their construction. How different are the conditions in the present day need not be insisted upon at length. But established procedure dies hard in this precedent-ridden country, especially when patronage falls into the hands of a privileged class, and it may be long before we find the business of shipconstruction reverting to a class who understand the operations they profess to direct. There is, however, room for distant hope."
The foregoing scheme of a navy board has been presented merely to show the logical composition of such a body, competent to do the work now done by the two boards it should supplant; but there is no evidence that such a body is needed in an executive capacity. As we have seen, it could not alter the political administration; it could not ameliorate the problems of industrial administration; hence it could only influence the military administration in the wielding of the navy as a weapon.
What evidence is there that the Navy Department has suddenly grown weak at its strong point, the only point in which its ability and fame have never been brought into question by any sort of failure or disaster. We have no substantial evidence that anything has ever been lacking in the war administration of the Navy Department. There was some evidence of needed reform in the war administration of the army. The navy has always had unmodified success in war, thanks to the unsurpassed ability and gallantry of our fighting officers, and nothing succeeds like success! With a long unbroken line of successes on our list no one can discredit the strategy on shore, or the strategy and tactics afloat, of our naval administration.
What sort of a body is a board, and what is it fit for. The name may be applied to all deliberative bodies. The senate, the house, or one of their committees, may be termed a board. The jury of a court of justice is a board, just the same as is a board of directors in a business establishment. Naval boards fall under the same heading. A board is a deliberative body whose functions are (1) to investigate an act already committed, (2) to assign a penalty, or (3) to lay down a rule governing future action. It is not in any sense of the word an executive body nor is it fit to become so. Should a grave question of state arise, no one can imagine that the president should consult congress or its committees before action. He has the law and precedent before him. He is the executive and must act; and then, afterwards, he must stand personally responsible to congress for the action committed. His cabinet opens to him the facilities of the law and precedent, and we imagine that a majority vote is not taken to govern his action in a matter that concerns any government department; but each cabinet member must be an executive head, and therefore expert, and in a position to supply any information needed. Formal cabinet meetings seem to be necessary for facility in the transaction of business, but it would seem that, if the offices of cabinet members were located under the roof of the White House where the president could deal directly with them, the meetings would be quickly reduced to the informalities existing between the executives at the Navy Department.
A board is slow and cumbersome, and is not fit to transact current business. Its speed, like a fleet, is that of its slowest member; and an absentee, or an opinionated or obstreperous member, is liable to throw the whole mechanism out of order.
Every question has to be argued out in detail for the enlightenment of everybody. An executive weighs carefully all the considerations of a case and comes to an unbiased conclusion; but if he is only a member of a board, having reached his conclusions he must present the case to the others, and is thus liable to become a strenuous verbal and paper advocate, pleading his views to such an extent as to create a suspicion of bias, thereby losing his point, and incidentally a lot of valuable time. But a board already biased by its necessary composition of line and staff officers, is liable to cause a division of votes out of personal considerations, foreign to the laws requiring efficiency in administration, and develop into party politics, so to speak. As a general rule the action of a board in purely technical matters is more or less accidental, and might be different if undertaken on another day when the members are in a different mood; but the ordinary navy board for the transaction of routine service investigation is a necessary safeguard, inasmuch as members are selected indiscriminately by rank, without regard to their qualifications to consider the particular case under investigation, in the hope of including enough talent to do the work required.
These are the reasons why an executive board, of any composition, would be an unnecessary encumbrance in the Navy Department. But if the secretary should see fit to create an advisory navy board, he could constitute it by a simple order. The best logic in the creation of the general board appears to have been in the purpose of supplying our then newly created admiral with an office and duties commensurate with his distinguished services. That object might be attained even better by appointing him president of the navy board as above outlined.
The only legislation needed is the following.
1. An act abolishing the Bureaus of Yards and Docks, Steam Engineering, and Equipment; and creating the Bureau of Personnel in the Navy Department.
2. An act creating the office of Assistant Chief of Bureau in each of the bureaus.
With an Assistant Chief of Bureau—already long needed, there being one already in fact if not in name—the bureau chiefs would have more time to devote to the operations of the navy board. This board would be merely advisory and dependent, as the present boards in the Navy Department are.
Let it be well understood, however, that a navy board is not in any way essential to the industrial efficiency of the Navy Department. I merely suggest, not advise, its creation. It may be valuable, to avoid friction and duplication of work inside the Navy Department, and to provide an advisory board covering the whole field of military and industrial operations, which neither of the two boards it replaces fully cover; but it cannot in any wise influence industrial administration, excepting in so far as it may facilitate the preparation of the general plans and specifications of vessels. Even then it can influence only the time, but not materially the cost, of providing new ships.
Civil engineers may be attached to naval stations belonging to the Bureau of Navigation, or to the staffs of commandants, or to navy-yards on duty for the Bureau of Construction and Repair, as their services may be required. Line officers performing engineering duty only, may be utilized at inspection duty on shore in an independent capacity, in keeping with their rank and eminent abilities. It is immaterial whether they serve a different bureau.
Line officers in general, during their periods of shore duty, may be assigned to inspection and other duties under the technical bureaus.
At private shipyards, line officers may be assigned as inspectors where needed, having separate specified duties.
When the necessary legislation shall have been passed, the Secretary of the Navy will have the authority to distribute the work among the bureaus, by which the above arrangements may be realized. When that is done, navy-yards will be able to build and repair vessels as cheaply and as efficiently as private shipyards, steadily year after year. Then, the industrial administrator may hope for the same measure of success in the future as has ever attended the efforts of the military administrator in the past.