Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/164

142 According to the above table the U. S. Shipping Board up to June 30, 1921, had built 13,359,911 dead weight tons, equivalent to 8,000,000 gross tons, at a cost of $2,963,900,725. In addition thereto, it had put $79,087,164 into shipyards and plants.

Thus the United States Shipping Board put about three billion dollars into its efforts to establish an American mercantile marine. The major part of this enormous investment will have to be written off asa total loss, a war cost. Charles M. Schwab, former director general of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, stated recently that as much as 2.5 billion dollars should be written off. J. B. Smull, vice-president of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, in a recent address said that it was planned to discard approximately 1,400 steel ships, 636 of which were then tied up idle; and 240 salable wooden ships which had cost $240,000,000. At the middle of 1921 about 1,000 of the Government’s fleet, of aggregate 5,782,772 dead weight tons, were idle. Experienced shipping operators were quoted as saying that the Government would have to face the probability of the larger part of its fleet decaying beside the docks for lack of customers to take them. It was estimated that the Government might be able to sell from 100 to 300 of its 1,400 steel ships.

In a recent address, A. D. Lasker, chairman of the U. S. Shipping Board, said: “At the close of the war we had 10,000,000 tons of shipping. Of this amount there are about 5,000,000 tons of good ships, the remain- der being only fair or unseaworthy. The good ships must be liquidated. But with American shipping in such a sickly position we cannot sell them because they cannot be operated profitably.” Mr. Lasker added