Co-operative Housing
(See page 357, March, 1936, Proceedings)
LIEUTENANT (J.G.) EDMUND T. NAPIER, JR., U.S. NAVY.—An article in the Proceedings of March, 1936, discussed the need of adequate housing facilities for Navy personnel. Its author urged the construction of one building to give the idea a trial, and erection of buildings in other Navy towns as the service becomes in favor of them. He advocated confinement of shares in the project to Navy personnel, he suggested that quarters be furnished at reasonable rent primarily to owners of shares, and to any other Navy personnel in the vicinity. Lieutenant Catlett’s idea is a good one. That one modern apartment building, or block of homes, built in Annapolis, Bremerton, Pensacola, and in other such Navy towns, would do much to stimulate local real estate dealers, the competition requiring them to build better and to keep rents reasonable.
A person who looks in the station and city telephone directories in Annapolis to see how many non-home owners live there, will find the city well supplied. Twenty- five pages of names or about 575 families of officers and warrant officers are attached to the Academy. In addition there are about 100 families of professors. Seven pages of names, about 140 families, belong to families of officers away on duty, deceased, or retired. Other non-home owners are enlisted men, civilians connected with naval activities, state government officials, legislators, students and professors of St. John’s College, and families of midshipmen who live here for several months or longer. Other transients for week-ends and for June Week are numerous. Annapolis has one progressive hotel and many tea rooms but has a deficiency of modern restaurants.
All people in the above classes are not necessarily renters but they form such a number that the renting portion of Annapolis is a large one. It is reasonable to think that real estate dealers to supply these renters would be prominent among the citizens of Annapolis, that the housing they supply would be moderate in price, moderate in age and in condition of repair, and nearly adequate in quantity for such a large demand.
The real estate dealers are numerous. Some of the occupations they represent are: a tailor at the Academy, a carpenter, the owner of a small electrical repair shop, the widow of a professor, and one owner of more than a hundred houses and apartments.
One class of owner contains those deserving people whose entire savings and most of whose income is tied up in the houses or apartments they own. Nobody can blame them for providing old places and the owners themselves live no better. Neither can one blame the professional real estate dealer for supplying no more than the competition requires.
The landlord complains of his high taxes, which are paid by the Navy tenant in the end. His furnace is one bought to rent, using 14 tons of coal per winter in an extreme case. The windows are poorly constructed of wood which seasoned after the house was built. Every tenant wants a job of weather stripping, which will save his coal bill and increase his rent only $5.00 a month. The refrigerator, if electric, is of the smallest, cheapest make on the market. The stove, similarly, is one bought to rent. In many cases the Navy tenant ends by partly or completely furnishing a house and taking a good loss when he moves.
Notwithstanding the high taxes, the repairs which eat up his profit, and the other burdens he bears, the owner sometimes finds it possible to build again as time passes, a structure just like the last one. A co-operative association would provide a few needed buildings, would help to inspire the local owners to competitive effort, and would finance itself from $100 shares, a value in keeping with the investment abilities of the Navy personnel. Once the organization proves that it can work, such an investment will not be subject to depression along with general business activity because the Navy personnel must have a place to live.
The situation is typical of Annapolis, and applies in general to the small Navy towns. In San Diego and the cities inhabited by the Navy a different situation exists. In times of national prosperity and high prices, Navy pay must stretch in order to cover rising rent prices. Eventually the co-operative housing field should spread to them.
Retired officers are available to act as local managers of housing units as they are built. Previous experience of these officers in living in rented quarters will serve them well. Their experience in repair and upkeep of shabby apartments should be worth considerable to the Navy, which learns early to take whatever is vacant for a home, to patch it so it will serve, and to move again when the time comes.
As Lieutenant Catlett remarked, the Navy has a mutual insurance society, an automobile insurance association, and it has in addition a co-operative purchasing association which could be given much better support than it is. The Navy has lived in rented places in Newport for many decades. Annapolis and Bremerton have been occupied by increasing numbers for several years.
The subject of co-operative housing is one that bears discussion and action.
Human Engineering and the Navy
(See page 352, March, 1936, Proceedings)
CAPTAIN D. E. CUMMINGS, U. S. NAVY. —This article by Lieutenant Commander Lincoln is valuable in that it recalls again the importance to the Navy of taking advantage of progress in the science which he calls human engineering. The author’s description of O’Connor’s wiggly block and other tests, which are not unknown to naval students of the subject, is interesting. However, the author seems unaware that the Navy has done considerable work along this line.
The purpose of human engineering tests is to find out at least cost of time and lost motion which available jobs individual candidates are best qualified to fill. Modern science has developed considerable knowledge of the powers and limitations of such tests. They can be classified in many ways. Some measure accomplishments; others aptitudes. Those considered by the author measure aptitudes, which are the Navy’s principal problem, since naval recruits usually lack industrial accomplishments. Some may be administered only by highly trained laboratorians; others by any intelligent, instructed executive. As the author points out, the O’Connor tests fall in the former class; the Navy has used the latter class. The O’Connor tests are given to individuals, the Navy’s tests to groups.
While the Navy should be alive to, and should from time to time experiment with human engineering tests and procedure at appropriate times and places, it must be fully realized, as it is by experts in industrial practice, that the methods which are useful in the General Electric Company cannot necessarily be applied to the Navy without a considerable amount of preliminary labor and study. They could not even be moved over into another industry without such preliminaries. These tests are tricky, and the only sound way of using them known to the writer is by correlating their results directly with the particular job in the particular organization in which the investigator is interested. Until a few years ago the Navy had the rates of machinist’s mate and engineman; men whose abilities after a sufficient interval of service had led them into these two rates were found to qualify quite differently in one of the Navy’s tests; yet the rates seemed so much alike that they were amalgamated. (Score low for scientific application of test results?)
The author advocates giving tests at recruiting stations, or, failing that, at training stations. Some Navy tests have been given at recruiting stations as a part of the procedure of determining suitability for Navy life; several are given at the training stations, and especially in the case of men considered for Class A specialist schools.
The author says: “ ... if each man had attached to his service record a card or sheet showing the result of his human engineering tests, there would be available . .. a scientific and reliable record of each man’s aptitude for naval service and leadership.” Pages 4-A and 4-B of the service record of every naval recruit contains precisely this.
The instance of non-use of available information in the assignment of recruits on board ship which the author uses as his text and horrible example is no doubt more or less typical; but it is by no means universal. There are many who do use and profit from the test information which the Navy is at pains to furnish them.
COMMANDER REGINALD B. HENRY (M.C.), U. S. NAVY.—In Lieutenant Commander Lincoln’s article it is strikingly brought out that when men arrive upon a station they are compelled to be assigned to their new duties with little or no consideration of their individual capabilities, for the simple reason that the records which accompany them do not indicate what such capabilities may be. The writer would like to mention one method of compensating for this omission which he has found decidedly useful over many years in dealing with members of the Hospital Corps, and that is, to require each man after reporting to write a letter, from one to two pages in length, giving in his own handwriting the story of his life; showing what his education has been; where he has lived and in what work he has been engaged before entering the service; where he has served and the particular duties he has had since enlistment; and any other important facts bearing on his history. The letter itself usually indicated the man’s qualifications, or lack of them, for clerical duties, and the contents pointed to those branches of a hospital corpsman’s work in which the writer would probably prove proficient. The first use of this letter was at the St. Helena Training Station during the war where a large complement of hospital corpsmen was on duty. The first batch of letters returned from the men showed that one apprentice who was filling an obscure position was a Ph.D. and an assistant professor of entomology in an important agricultural and mechanical college. He was immediately put to work in accordance with his abilities and soon after was detailed to make an entomological report covering the station. It was not long before this hospital corpsman was given a commission and assigned to regular duty involving his speciality.