The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

The soul of transportation never dies. It may pass from one physical form to another, but it always car- ries on; it does not perish. Stage by stage, it goes forward to build the new on the shell of the old. Progress of necessity demands sacrifice but progress does not demand waste. It is an immutable law of nature that nothing in this world is ever lost: there may be change, but no annihilation. It is, there- fore, one of the important problems of mankind to effect essential changes without waste, either in men or materials. Things no longer use- ful must be transformed into things that are useful. World War I wrought titanic change in the world. At its conclusion new tasks had to be faced, new problems solved. Great armies had to be re- turned to useful occupations, the vast machinery of war had to be con- verted to peace-time uses. Enormous quantities of equipment, hurriedly built in the rush days of the con- flict were forced into disuse with the Cessation of hostilities. Lo restore these to usefulness, to transform them if need be until they could again be of utility...this was the problem confronting governments and people everywhere. Wrapped up in this problem for the United States government was the question of disposing of the Emer- gency fleet, constructed at such ren FRCON Furnace prodigious cost to the American people. A few ships could be, and were, sold to private companies; others were operated by the govern- ment; but vast fleets of them, after a few post-war voyages, were tied up in rivers and harbors in all parts of the country, there to rest in pathetic idleness, gaunt ghosts of the sea. Idleness inevitably sapped their strength. As the years passed the ships deteriorated more and more. Rust took its toll. Some experts declared it would cost more to re- condition and modernize them than it would to build new vessels. In the meantime, no definite American ship- ping policy evolved, and as the ships swung at their moorings traf- fic was gradually diverted to for- eign bottoms. At last it was decided to scrap 199 of the boats, but in scrapping them to carry out their original destiny. This article is not a discussion of the wisdom or lack of wisdom of that decision. It is a story of the conversion of the boats from sea duty to land duty. It is the saga of 199 ships; ships which, built bit by bit, metal on metal and wood on wood, were torn apart the same way and the materials used for the pur- pose to which they were originally dedicated...transport ation! Picture a dock, half a mile long. Page 119