During two years of duty on the U. S. S. “Outside” I have observed conditions in civil life at closer range than is possible for most naval officers. Remembering my own misconceptions, and the fallacious statements concerning the commercial world which were frequently made by my brother officers, I have decided to make this attempt to describe the U. S. S. “Outside” for the benefit of those I left in the service. It is hoped that the following paper will assist officers who resign in making the necessary readjustments, and that it will convince those who remain in the Navy that many of the conditions which they find unsatisfactory in the service also exist in civil life.
My experience has been confined to work in a large corporation, and my remarks may not apply to conditions found in small organizations. It is my belief, however, that few officers would be satisfied with employment in small companies. Naval officers are of necessity different from civilians in their manner of thinking and reacting, and the first step which an officer must take after resigning is to completely readjust his life. It is much easier for a large company to absorb an officer and carry him through this period than it would be for a small organization, where the staff of trained men is limited to a few experienced people, each of whom is expected to carry a full share of the work from the start. The small companies find it necessary to draw their engineers and technical assistants from large corporations which have given them their training.
Furthermore, I do not believe that the average naval officer would be satisfied in civil life after leaving the secure haven of the Navy, if he entered the service of a small company which could not afford to offer sickness insurance, retirement benefits, and annual vacation periods with pay. Only the very largest commercial organizations have been able to offer such employee benefits, and those offered are seldom as generous as corresponding benefits enjoyed by naval officers.
In a small company there is a feeling that the “boss” is digging down into his own pocket to give the employees their pay. Salaries are on a much less personal basis in large organizations, but in large companies increases of pay are liable to be slow, due to the lack of intimate contact between an employee and the executive who is responsible for his salary. Another disadvantage of a small company is the tendency of the employer to be content to let his young engineers remain at the work for which they appear to be best suited, rather than train them in all branches of the business to fit them to assume executive responsibilities, as is the practice in some of the largest commercial organizations. However, in all civilian companies it is left largely up to the individual to exert the necessary pressure to secure periodic promotions or increases in pay, and to “sell” his employer the idea that it would be to the best interests of the company if the nature of his work were so varied as to fit him for the higher positions in the management. In the Navy, on the other hand, all such matters relating to pay and promotion are arranged by law and custom.
With a large variety of specialties within the line and several staff corps to which young Naval Academy graduates are eligible, it is comparatively easy for a naval officer to find the type of work for which he is suited, and to obtain an opportunity to develop along his chosen line of endeavor. Since officers are apt to lose sight of the breadth of field covered by the various ramifications of their profession, it might be well to dwell for a moment on this point. Consider, for example, the varieties of engineering which must be undertaken by naval officers in regard to research, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of the great variety of materials used by the Navy, including ships, aircraft, and shore establishments. Consider the openings in the fields of administration, law, diplomacy, literature, secret service or “intelligence” work, and a variety of other occupations. These permit the widest scope for diversification of interests or the most intense specialization, depending on the tastes and abilities of the individuals concerned.
Taking the Construction Corps as an example, we find that even in this relatively narrow field of work it is possible to specialize in the design and construction of various types of warships, aircraft, and auxiliary vessels, in the administration of naval industrial plants, and in a number of other scientific and engineering activities. Naval constructors must not only be able to design, construct, and repair the hulls of ships and aircraft, but they must also have some knowledge of almost every form of engineering in order to coordinate the design of the vessel or aircraft and its armament, machinery, and protection, and to supervise the design and manufacture of a great many articles of equipment for the vessel. Their work therefore requires a knowledge of such widely varying subjects as ship and aircraft design, marine engineering, boiler and turbine design, structures, many forms of advanced mathematics including rigid dynamics, thermodynamics, and hydraulics, and the theoretical and practical working of direct-and- alternating-current machinery.
We might therefore classify the work of the naval constructor under the headings of Materials and Personnel, since we find members of this corps working with the problems of providing the Navy with the materials it requires for effective operation, and managing the civilians and enlisted men who design, produce, inspect, or repair these materials. As will be seen by the following list, a great variety of work is available for even this relatively small corps, which is sometimes believed to lead a uniform and monotonous existence so far as type of duty and geographical location are concerned. The percentages given are based on the 1925 Navy Register.
We see therefore that in the small corps discussed above there is almost unlimited opportunity for specialization and for selection of type of occupation. When a young man in commercial life finds himself unsuited to his work, he is fortunate indeed if the company employing him is so organized as to permit his readjustment to a new occupation without making it necessary for him to resign and to lose the benefit of several years of experience in that organization. In fact, it can safely be said that no commercial company offers as great a variety of work from which a young officer can choose his career, or as great an opportunity for a misplaced individual to obtain a transfer to some other part of the same organization, as does the Navy. While it is not always easy for a naval officer to determine in advance what class of work he will be best suited for, every encouragement is given to all promising young officers to assist them in finding those niches into which they will fit best. When we think of the large numbers of civilians of education and experience comparable to those of a naval lieutenant who are grossly misplaced but who are held to their tasks through economic necessity, we realize how favorably the Navy compares with civil life in this regard. It should be remembered that a young officer is apt to demand perfection in adjustment to his occupation, whereas the best that should be hoped for is an opportunity to harmonize most of his characteristics with the occupation he has chosen, accepting certain conflicting influences as inevitable.
The matter of leave of absence is probably more important in civil life than in the Navy, since it permits the civilian to obtain the change of scene which officers are apt to accept as a part of the day’s work, without due appreciation for the educational and recreational advantages which they enjoy through travel and constantly changing bases. Not even the largest commercial organizations offer more than two weeks’ vacation with pay each year, and only the older employees whose services can be spared are given additional time off without pay. The small companies make no attempt to grant vacations with pay, but most of them will permit their employees to be absent two weeks each year, with loss of pay.
I often recall with pleasure one year of my naval service during which I was granted three months and one week of leave with pay, two months to take a scientific collecting trip and five weeks to make an ocean voyage to Hawaii and Puget Sound which I had never visited before, with free transportation in both cases on naval vessels. These trips were welcome breaks in a tour of shore duty spent largely at an office desk. Later when I resigned, I received a month and a half of leave with pay, which was of considerable assistance to me in getting properly located in civil life. Such generosity regarding leaves of absence would be simply unheard of in the commercial world.
Finally, an officer who resigns is apt to miss the glamour of the service, and the prestige which he has learned to accept as a matter of course. By obtaining a position with a large company, it is possible to retain a part of the prestige which would otherwise have been lost by resigning from the Navy.
Assuming, then, that a former officer obtains a position with a corporation somewhat comparable in size with the Navy, let us discuss the most common fallacies which are generally accepted as truth by young officers who are not wholly satisfied with their occupations. First it is stated that the Navy is more bound up with paper work or “red tape” than are outside companies of similar magnitude. If every officer who believes that this is true would spend one leave period studying the organization and system of one of the large automobile plants, railroads, or oil companies, he would realize that the Navy is highly efficient in this regard. The Navy could well be excused for having a greater amount of system than private companies, since in the service there is a double system of accountability. Funds are obtained from Congress under various appropriations, each of which must be accounted for separately; and military and industrial efficiency require that another entirely different system of recording and reporting costs be used to permit those in authority to obtain the maximum benefit for the government from every dollar spent.
Personnel matters are much more complicated in a military organization than in an industrial plant so far as records are concerned, although it is true that the Navy is spared any dealings with shop committees, trade unions, etc. In civil life the employer has no hold on his men beyond the wage or salary contract, and the employees are responsible to the civil authorities even while at work. Also, the provision of additional forces in times of emergency is difficult in the Navy, where there is no market of trained men from which the recruits can be drawn by simply offering sufficient pay to attract idle or less advantageously employed men.
The most severe critics of the Navy’s system are the younger officers who have not served on duty in the Department, where they would have had to depend on full and accurate reports from the fleet and shore establishments for their knowledge of what was happening under the ever changing circumstances encountered by the operating forces in the field or at sea. The highly trained major-caliber gun turret has been rightly termed the most marvelous example of organization and training which can be seen anywhere in the world; and this and the other activities afloat and ashore in naval establishments which reflect a uniform degree of efficiency and esprit de corps, indicate that the system under which the whole organization is directed is fundamentally sound. There is a continual evolution of the Navy’s system, and changes are made during each administration which simplify and modernize paper work and procedure, making them more adaptable to both the peace- and war-time needs of the service.
The second misconception which I desire to point out is the belief that the system of pay and promotion in the Navy is less conducive to the development of efficiency, energy, and initiative than that generally used in civil life. In this age of promotion by selection and retirement with length of service, we can safely assume that the relatively few officers who reach the higher ranks are on the whole the best, although there will of necessity always be individual cases where exact justice is not received. In commercial life, on the other hand, promotion depends to a large extent on the employee’s ability to “sell” his “boss” the idea that by granting him an increase in pay the profits of the company can be definitely increased. This is sometimes very difficult to accomplish, and efforts to achieve the desired end are apt to detract from the attention which can be given to the work at hand. Furthermore, the head of each department of a large company is held responsible by the directors for keeping the total pay roll of his branch of the business as small as is consistent with efficient operation.
The next fallacy we have to consider is that a naval officer has less opportunity to exercise initiative and has less authority and responsibility than a civilian of corresponding age and training. My experience and observation have been quite to the contrary. At twenty-seven years of age as a lieutenant I was placed in charge of the isolated dry- dock Dewey and shore shops, employing an average force of about 350 workmen and 25 supervisors of all shipbuilding trades. The fact is that from the day of graduation, an officer can assume all the responsibility that he is willing to carry, and he will find that ample authority is granted in proportion to the responsibility he has shown himself worthy to carry. A young naval officer is simply embarrassed by opportunity, and is given every encouragement by his superior officers, none of whom feel that they will lose their jobs because of the youngster’s success. There is no condition in the Navy similar to that which is sometimes observed in civil life, where a senior discourages the junior’s assumption of responsibility and withholds the benefits of experience and accumulated knowledge, in the fear that the junior will become able to replace the senior. Every high-ranking naval officer accepts the fact that he will be replaced by one of his younger brother officers, and although a similar condition prevails in some commercial organizations, the Navy benefits by the comparison.
One thing which sometimes is lost sight of by naval officers is the opportunity afforded in the service to obtain postgraduate instruction and to carry on studies and educational courses during the spare time which most of them enjoy. The Navy is advancing with the tide of general industrial development, and the need for specialization and for narrowing the field which any officer must cover if he is to be successful and give the proper intensity of effort to his work is being recognized. Except while attending the various postgraduate courses, this educational process must depend on individual study, but with the excellent foundation which every officer has received at the Naval Academy, self-instruction should be highly satisfactory.
It is sometimes stated that naval officers are poorly paid and have much less opportunity to accumulate wealth than have civilians of corresponding age and training. This is true of the higher ranking officers, but is decidedly untrue of the younger officers, who are very well paid according to civilian standards, especially if we evaluate the benefits which officers receive. Considering medical and dental attention, vacation periods, free hospitalization and unlimited sick leave with pay, retirement, and other benefits, we see that -the pay of an ensign just out of the Academy is well above that of a young civilian college graduate. The fact that promotions will follow each other with regularity and certainty, and that nobody with any ability at all will lag behind, compensates young officers for the futility of hoping to forge ahead of their classmates or running mates. The travel allowances and transportation of dependents and household effects granted to naval officers are more generous than those given by many large companies in civil life, which counters the statement that naval officers’ negative bank balances are due to -their frequent changes of residence.
I believe that efficient living and systematic saving are just as easy for an officer as for a civilian, and that it is possible for a naval officer to budget his expenditures and invest his surplus in such a manner as to build up a small fortune before he retires. I used to look upon naval officers as congenitally improvident individuals, but I have seen just as little thrift among civilians employed by large corporations who are almost as sure of old-age pensions as naval officers are sure of retirement. It seems that a person must be thrifty by nature, or must be living in fear of a penniless old age, if he is to lay aside an appreciable part of his income during these times when salaries, both in the service and out, appear to lag behind the prices of those luxuries which have been produced in such profusion and have received such a wide distribution among persons of all social classes that they have assumed the nature of necessities.
It is certain that anyone familiar with the thorny path of a young doctor or lawyer who has no capital with which to support himself during his first five years out of college, and no powerful friends or relatives to help him build up a practice, will not consider the young naval officer poorly paid. In connection with the above it should be remembered that the doctor or lawyer frequently spends seven years in college and two years of interne or law-office-clerk “hack” work, at the cost of many thousands of dollars to himself, before he can even begin the struggle for a living.
The civilian engineer fares better at first than a doctor or lawyer. After four or five years of college, salaries of between $125 and $150 per month, without any benefits, are not difficult to obtain from large companies. For one of these engineers to reach a salary of $336 per month cash and several hundred dollars per month more in benefits within seven years after graduation, as is possible for a naval lieutenant, would be simply unheard of for any but an extraordinarily gifted “sales-engineer” or one with considerable influence to supplement his ability and insure a rapid rise.
This brings us to a point which should receive the most careful consideration from all young officers who intend to resign. When entering the service of a large commercial organization, it is generally necessary for an ex-naval officer to start at or very near the bottom. This has a twofold purpose; the officer is of practically no value to his employer at first and, since salaries cannot well be kept secret, it would demoralize the older employees if the newcomer were to receive more pay than they had reached through years of service. The smallest difference in pay between that which the officer receives in the Navy and that which he can command on the U.S.S. “Outside” exists when he is in his first pay period, and it is therefore better to resign within three years after graduation than spend years in acquiring experience which will have at best only an indirect application to his work as a civilian.
An officer should realize that when he resigns his usefulness to society is temporarily destroyed, and that nothing he has acquired in the Navy, not even his knowledge of the administration of naval and Civil Service personnel, can be applied directly in his new occupation. An exception to this rule would seem to be the case of the young constructor who resigns and seeks work in a shipyard. Shipbuilding is not one of our primary industries, and although it appears that conditions in this field will tend to improve during the next few years, there are enough civilians being trained in this work to take care of the commercial demand. It is difficult for a young naval constructor to obtain employment with a commercial shipyard unless he is willing to start work on a salary considerably below that received by his classmates in the service. The constructor’s basic education and experience has been along the lines of warship and aircraft design and, although he is much better grounded in the fundamentals than a civilian who has had only four years of college work, it requires considerable time for him to learn the multitude of practical details which are foreign to his experience afloat and ashore in the Navy.
Success in civil life is more a matter of salesmanship and personality than it is of technical knowledge. In the Navy when an officer takes over a new position, his ability to handle the job is unquestioned by those immediately around him, since his authority and duties are clearly outlined in orders and regulations, and everyone he works with is either above or below him in authority and responsibility. It is true that the naval officer must use common sense and must have a pleasing personality if he is to make the greatest possible success of his new job, but he does not start out with a real handicap as does a civilian who takes over some new work. There are always men on the job in civil life who feel that they know how to do their work without the newcomer’s help, and he must adopt a program of “selling” himself to everyone with whom he works, and be very slow in taking authority and responsibility away from others until he has demonstrated his fitness to take an active part in the undertaking. He will find no clearly cut line of demarcation between his rank or duties and those of the other engineers or technical assistants on the job and he will be made to feel that his presence is undesirable to some of those already at work who fear that the newcomer will encroach on their domain. Under such conditions an aggressive policy would be sure to fail, even if it were adopted by a person unusually gifted.
We now come to a few of the more personal considerations which lead some officers to look longingly toward life on the U. S. S. “Outside.” We will neglect any physical disqualifications, such as chronic seasickness or acquired flat feet, poor eyesight or color blindness, except insofar as to state that in some cases of this type it would be better for an officer to obtain a transfer to one of the corps if possible rather than leave an occupation to which he is devoted.
First there is the contention that there is less home life for the naval officer than for the civilian. The inability to settle down, acquire a beautiful home, and make friendships that will not have to be broken up or interrupted every few years constitutes a disadvantage of life in the Navy for certain types of individuals. On the other hand, when an officer resigns he loses the friends in the service upon whom he has unconsciously learned to depend both for professional assistance and for happiness. We all have gregarious instincts, and nobody is self-sufficient, either in a personal or business way. Successful business men admit that without friends success in commercial life is impossible or extremely difficult to attain. The Navy is like a large fraternity with a ladies’ auxiliary, which takes the place of all other social and professional ties, and years are required for a former officer to build up a corresponding group of friends and associates in civil life.
Naval officers are frequently separated from their wives and families, but this tends to keep alive the elusive sentiments of love, a.n4 .obviate the boredom too often felt by civilians. Officers have social opportunities which many of them would not be able to enjoy as civilians, due to lack of money or family connections; and they have opportunities for foreign and domestic travel with their families while they are still young and able to enjoy and profit by their experiences, when few civilians can afford such luxuries as travel. Furthermore, naval officers are a great deal better off than are those civilians who work under contract on foreign stations for large companies, who find it extremely difficult or absolutely impossible to obtain transfers to the United States even when ill health or similar causes make their return imperative. Any officer who believes that civilians of either the stay-at-home, commuter, or the foreign- service type have a happier lot than his should make the acquaintance of a few such persons at once. This contact would be in line with the Navy’s policy to stimulate intercourse and a better understanding between the service and the people, and would in most cases be conducive to the officer’s peace of mind concerning his own profession.
Some line officers feel that they have no inborn love of the sea, and they find insufficient thrill or inspiration in the seagoing existence to outweigh the discomforts which are inherent in the life afloat. Life aboard ship is monotonous for some officers, since the same faces are met with daily, and watch standing and drills break up the time and discourage any effort at concentration on scientific studies or outside activities. Although some officers feel that they lead a dog’s life, they are restless to be at sea again before each of their periods of shore duty is completed. It is without doubt very difficult for an officer to lead a thoroughly hygienic life on board ship, which is liable to make officers age quickly, although this tendency is probably more than offset by the danger which confronts many civilians of wearing themselves out with the constant grind of office work, which calls for more personal attention to detail than is generally required of line officers. While it is true that the varieties of physical exercise which can be taken regularly while on sea duty are strictly limited, and watch standing and other duties interfere with the maintenance of a regular schedule, I believe that naval officers are generally as healthy as civilians who have much greater natural advantages to help them to keep fit.
Officers on shore duty are in close touch with a broad field of commerce and industry, and are able to make the acquaintance of civilians of a great variety of occupations. By studying the political and social conditions in the localities where they are stationed, officers can achieve a national rather than a local outlook. Officers on foreign duty who will devote a part of their leisure to study of the conditions observed about them can attain an international rather than a strictly national point of view.
Some officers crave the satisfaction of seeing their work in the concrete, tangible form of something designed, planned, or constructed, while many line officers must be content for the most part in seeing abstract results. To illustrate, we might consider a crippled vessel towed to a yard after a battle. The yard officers size up the job, the repairs are made, and when the dock is flooded and the vessel steams out of the yard the superintendents in charge of the work gain their reward in the sight itself, coupled with their memory picture of the wreck that came in. How differently would they feel had they spent the same length of time in watch standing and holding drills on board ship, although the possibility of attaining a high turret score or success in battle accompanies such activity. Here again we see that a transfer to another type of work within the service would permit a realization of the desired end without resigning.
If a list were prepared of all of the compensating features of a naval officer’s career it would have to include the glamour and applause which occasionally come to the line officer in time of war. There is little recognition of the services of the civilian in war time, regardless of how necessary his services are to the nation’s success. It cannot be denied that pride in wearing the uniform and in appearing before the public eye are drawing cards with many officers, which they would sacrifice if they resigned. The wearing of gaudy uniforms in public by some lodge members illustrates the subconscious need many people have for being “splendid” and conspicuous.
Naval officers are sometimes oppressed by the feeling that they are subject to military law and are in danger of court-martial proceedings at all times. They feel that they are expected to know more regulations, orders, and instructions than it is humanly possible for them to learn in a lifetime. Since leaving the service I have often wondered how this feeling could be as oppressive as the fear which is always facing a civilian officer in a commercial organization of losing his professional reputation and means of making a livelihood, due to making a bad error in judgment or breaking one of the cardinal rules of procedure or ethics. The feeling of competition for a part of the world’s goods, from which a naval officer is spared, is just as depressing for some people as would be the various hardships endured by the officers in the Navy.
Presence at numerous drills, inspections, receptions, and full-dress functions, and the dignified and reserved bearing which it is considered necessary for officers to assume if they are to maintain discipline, are not agreeable to men with certain temperaments. However, the social and business formalities of civil life would probably be just as unpleasant, and such persons must be prepared to accept a lower social and economic standing if they are to avoid all but a minimum of formality and restraint.
The broadness of the field which naval officers must cover in education and training, if they are to be considered as theoretically qualified for promotion to the higher ranks, is terrifying to some officers, who would specialize in a narrow field were it not for their fear of discrimination against the specialist in selection. I believe that there are as many blind alleys in any large commercial organization as there are in the Navy, and that the tendency in civil life is for an officer to be forced into a specialty rather than encouraged to stay out. In either case, however, it is possible for the energetic and balanced person to master the details of a specialty without losing sight of the business as a whole, and to develop the necessary administrative skill to permit him to compete successfully for the higher positions in the organization.
I would like to advise naval officers who have no particular point of vantage from which to break into civil life to consider very carefully, before they resign, whether or not the needed improvement in their health and happiness could be as well attained by making a change in diet and habits regarding exercise, by the acquisition of a different philosophy, or by a transfer to some other work or to a corps. I would never advise an officer to remain in an occupation for which he had found himself temperamentally or physically unsuited, and I believe that many young officers who are discontented in the service would do well to resign and seek until they found an occupation which would call forth their full enthusiasm and best abilities. But there is need here for the old warning that the next field always looks greener, and many former officers have learned that lack of perfect adjustment is easier to bear in the service than out of it.
A careful consideration of all that the adjustment to civil life will mean as regards money and friends as well as personal comfort, and a wide acquaintance with civilians and a knowledge of the life they lead by day as well as by night, will convince the average naval officer that only in the most exceptional cases would it be advisable for him to resign and start afresh on the U. S. S. “Outside.” Unless an officer is certain that he possesses an unusual set of physical, mental, and temperamental characteristics which will make it impossible for him to properly adjust himself to the naval environment, with its great variety of activities from which he can choose his occupation, let me advise him to remain in the service, since in the words of Shakespeare it is safer to “bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.”