SHIPPING: Ships-- for What?

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Congressionally speaking, few U. S. industries are as strong as the puny U. S. shipbuilding industry, which employed only 55,000 men (in construction) in 1929, only 65,000 last July. No U. S. industry, big or little, has been so welcome in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Washington as shipbuilding. None has sucked so well at the public tit. But last week shipbuilding was threatened with political orphanage. For the sea-loving President and his Neutrality Senators appeared to be compromising with land-loving William Borah and his Neutrality Senators on Cash-&-Carry. This would force Europe's belligerents to come and get whatever Congress will let them buy—in their own ships. And this, in turn, would obsolete the up-&-coming U. S. Maritime Commission and its program of rebuilding the merchant marine to handle the foreign trade of the U. S.

Nor was there much chance that the Allies would wish to buy ships useless to the U. S. At the outbreak of World War I, 34,825,000 tons of shipping were on the seas, at its end new construction had offset all but 1,784,000 tons lost in the War, scrapped. But at the outbreak of World

War II, 68,000,000 tons are already in the water—of which the British Empire owns 21,000,000 tons and can draw on at least 30,000,000 tons more.

But one big merchant-navy man who was not bothered by all this was Maritime Commission Chairman-Admiral Emory Scott Land. On the chance that any time within the next two years Congress might want many more merchantmen than the U. S. now has, particularly merchantmen convertible into aircraft carriers and other handy things to have around in an emergency, Chairman-Admiral Land meant to have ships on hand. His answer to last week's shipbuilding jitters: to shovel out orders for seven ships more to the overworked yards which are currently building merchantmen.