A great many foreign-built craft sought American registration under this measure. It was discovered that the hoisting of the Ameri can flag was the signal for a demand from foreign officers and crews for the wage scale and food scale of Americans. The result was an immediate and large increase in the cost of manning and maintaining these foreign-built ships, so that they came upon the same basis as American ships of native construction. It was demonstrated, therefore, that a free-ship policy in itself could not suffice to solve the problem of the American merchant marine in overseas trade. Though nearly all maritime governments, as the great war drew on and as the need of ships became more pressing, en acted laws forbidding the transfer of vessels to foreign purchasers, yet before this action was taken a considerable fleet of foreign-built vessels had been naturalized under the Stars and Stripes. This reinforcement from foreign fleets and the diversion of large coastwise car riers from domestic trade to overseas naviga tion, due to the high freight rates that had prevailed since the war began, suddenly and greatly increased the amount of American ton nage registered for foreign carrying 'from 1,066,288 on 30 June 1914, to 2,185,008 on 30 June 1916. In these same two years the pro portion of American imports and experts car ried under the American flag had risen from 9.7 per cent to 16.3 per cent.
A Swift War European War brought to the United States such a sharp real ization of the need of a greatly increased fleet of American ships as the °delivery wagons" of American commerce, that immediate and posi tive action was demanded from Congress. This took the form at first of a proposal for am bitious government ownership and operation of merchant vessels, for the purchase or construc tion of which it was provided that $50,000,000 should be at once appropriated. But the prin ciple of government participation in the mer chant shipping business was so earnestly op posed in Congress and by the mercantile com munity that the law finally passed on 7 Sept. 1916 contained as its main feature authority for the appointment of a United States Ship ping Board, which should have the power to supervise ocean freight rates for the purpose of preventing unjust combinations of ocean carriers or the exaction of excessive charges, This Federal Shipping Board was given, moreover, general authority over the merchant marine, and was authorized to devise the best methods to increase it. Government ownership and operation of merchant tonnage was reduced to a minimum, with the stipulation that no ship should be purchased by the government unless it were about to be withdrawn from American commerce without an intention on the part of the owner to return it within a reasonable time and that no ship. controlled by the government
should be operated by the government unless private capital could not be persuaded to em ploy it. Moreover, the operation of any verse; on the part of the United States must cease at the end of five years from the conclusion of the European War. The government, how ever, was authorized by the new law to con tinue indefinitely to purchase, lease, charter or transfer vessels to be employed by private ship owners, and was even authorized to secure foreign-built vessels for operation in the coast wise trade of the United States.
When on 6 April 1917, the United States itself entered the war, it was recognized that an extraordinary effort must be made to sup port our Allies with food and munitions, and also to transport our American army to Europe and to sustain our troops with their essential equipment and supplies after they had landed Therefore, the new Shipping Board, on lb April 1917, organized the Emergency Fleet Cor poration for the carrying out of the vast pro gram of ship construction that had become im perative. There were at that time 37 shipyards building steel vessels and 24 yards building wooden seagoing vessels in the United States In these yards were 235 shipways. In the presence of war, the previous reluctance to give national aid to maritime industry suddenly vanished. The Emergency Fleet Corporation advanced generous funds for the expansion of existing shipyards and the creation of new yards, and enormous contracts for new tonnage were distributed to builders on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. The major part of these con tracts called, of course, for steel-hulled ships. but after some hesitation the building of sev eral hundred wooden steamers was also author ized, in the full understanding that steam driven wooden craft of large dimensions were inferior to steel ships for overseas service, in the conviction that Lloyd George's call for °ships, ships and yet more ships" for the des perate need of the Allies justified the unusual expedient.
Though unforeseen difficulties delayed the work on both steel vessels and wooden vessels. yet the extension of old and the creation of new yards, the launching of hulls and the fabricating of machinery were forced with such zeal that at the signing of the armistice on 11 Nov. 1918 there were 341 shipyards and LIU launching ways in the United States. The num ber of workmen in American shipyards had increased from 45,000 to 380,000. The ship building capacity of the United States had be come far greater than that of the United King dom. On 31 Oct. 1918 no fewer than 106 steer steamers of 6,000 gross tons or over were under construction in American yards as compared with 66 of 6,000 gross tons or over in British yards.