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BUILDERS





Vol. CII.





NEW YORK, JULY 27, 1918





No. 4





What WiU Ocean Delivery Service Mean to You?

Part New Tonnage Will Play in  Woiid's  Gommerce  After War
Described by Head of U.   S.   Shipping  Board

By EDWARD N. HURLEY,
Chairman United States Shipping Board.





AMERICAN business has the best delivery service
in the world—for customers at home. The de-
partment store not only delivers a spool of thread
to a remote suburb on schedule, but delivers it through an
interlocking system of motor trucks, light vehicles, branch
distributing stations and wagon routes, which speed up
service and cut costs. The manufacturer and jobber reach
their customers by flexible railroad service extending from
the loaded freight car to the emergency express shipment
to fill out missing stock numbers—and if these do not
suffice they get closer to the customer with branches. This
typical American delivery service has been extended to
soil products, like California oranges, Colorado canta-
loupes, Northwestern red apples, Florida grapefruit,
Georgia peaches. By means of the refrigerator car and
modern grading and packages, new trade has been built
by serving new customers in new ways.

But all this delivery development is for our home trade.
No country in the world hauls a ton of freight on the rail-
roads as cheaply as we do. No country in the world has
linked up such vast territory as ours on a modern delivery
basis. Almost anything we raise or manufacture any-
where in the United States can be hauled profitably,
quickly, right side up, in good order—at home. We are
not daunted by distance, bulk, expense, or difficulties. If
one delivery method won't work, we invent another.

But always for ourselves.

When we have prime American products to deliver to
a foreign customer, it has been our practice thus far to
call in the rusty ocean tramp steamer, turn the job over
to a foreigner, and forget about it.

Imagine a great factory or department store with no
delivery system for its customers. When goods are packed,
the shipping clerk steps to the door, whistles for any old
expressman or teamster, and hands the goods over to him.
That is what we have been doing in foreign trade. The
more dilapidated the expressman's rig, and the cheaper
his bid on the job, the better we thought it.

Meanwhile, the Briton and the German have been reach-
ing some of the best trade in the world by the best ocean-
delivery service. We started our jobbing teamster to
South America with our goods and forgot all about him.
He promised to get there as soon as he could. While he
was on the road, the Briton and the German sped past
him with fast delivery trucks of the latest type.

But the war is going to change all this. When we get
done with our job of making the world safe for democ-
racy, we will have 25,000,000 tons of merchant ships, or
the equivalent of England's mercantile marine, which is
the largest. To-day, we are building ships for war. But
each improvement in war shipping brings its correspond-
ing improvement in merchant shipping.    A year ago we





would have been glad to get our hands on ships of any
size or type, and our hopes were centered on a large fleet
of wooden steamers of moderate capacity. To-day, while
still keeping all our wooden shipyards busy, we have in-
creased the size to 5,000 tons, and now know that most
of this wooden tonnage will be kept in coastwise trade,
releasing the steel ships for the war zone. Where we were
glad to get steel ships of 5,000 to 7,000 tons a year ago,
now we are building them in 8,000 and 10,000 ton types,
and planning troop ships of 12,000 and 15,000 and even
20,000 tons, with speeds of 16 to 20 knots an hour.

It is none too early for the American business man to
begin thinking of these ships in terms of modern delivery
service to foreign customers. And not the business man
alone, but the farmer, the consumer, the community—the
whole American Nation. We must get ships into our
thinking, and planning, and work, just as we have got
railroads into the American consciousness.

When the war ends, there will be work for ships all
ovcr the world, Peace will soon make the British mer-
cantile marine as strong as ever. The Norwegians and
Japanese are building ships. The Germans will undoubt-
edly rebuild their mercantile marine. So it is possible
to look ahead and see times coming when we must com-
pete with these nations. And we shall never hold our
own unless both our ships and our foreign trade are
organized along the efficient delivery lines that facilitate
business at home.

We must have ships running to all our customers in
Latin America, the Pacific, and Europe on regular delivery
schedules. Gennany had the greatest international de-
partment-store delivery system in the world before the
war. See how her merchant marine was tied up in for-
eign harbors. The Hamburg-American line had in 1913
a total of 192 ships, and with these ships it covered 74
regular steamship routes. The North German Lloyd had
133 ships, and its regular routes covered practically the
whole world. British shipping is on the same basis of
regular routes and regular deliveries. We would not un-
derlake to give service to customers at home without our
fast freight lines, express facilities, and special cars for
special goods. We cannot hope to get close to foreign
custoniers, and keep close, and give service, unless we
organize our new ships to run on regular routes and em-
body thc idea of regular servicc into the ncw forcign trade
which we must build.

Kegular service on regular steamship routes will be vi-
tally nccessary if we are to hold our own either in shipping
or export tradc.

The other day a steaniship man in my office painted a
somcwhat glooniy picture of after-war shipping rivalry.
(Coiifiintrd on pagc 88)