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'Perhaps that includes the track. - be extended is 430 hour for electric power, while across the bay at Seattle the regular com- mercial rate is 2%c. The contractor has been obliged in self defense to install his own electric plant, though the yard, with no investment, interest or depreciation or insurance or tax charges, as customary in keeping all government costs, should have been able to undersell the private concern, to say nothing of a desire to facilitate prog- ress. The navy is different, however. It may be well to add that the amount of this contract and the information regarding the charges for electric cur- rent are not from departmental reports. Annual Reports are Certainly Amusing. 'And so it goes all through the list. The annual reports ought to be far 'more popular than any "six best sell- ers." They are certainly more amus- ing end at least they are instructive. The estimates are a delight. There isn't a thing asked for that is not ab- solutely needed to stay in business. Compare the reports of the progress of the current year with the wailing and lamentation and prayers for more, of past years, The "bureau: again in- vites attention to the necessity for additional dry docks." Perhaps au something were done towards com- so long under way it would help. They certainly would be additional. At Charleston $20,000 is asked for an oil house and $10,000 tor a shelter for a yard locomotive. Prob- ably in Renaissance architecture. To extend a crane track along one side of a dry dock, about five or six hundred feet, $25,000 is asked, about $230,000 a mile. pleting those Cranes With Full Jeweled Movement. A new 40-ton locomotive crane is wanted for Mare island at $55,000. This also is to be full-jeweled. The old has been in use 11 years and is worn out. Must be a mistake; nothing ever wears out in a navy yard. But the report insists that it is so, not- withstanding that there are hundreds of locomotive cranes in industrial plants all over the country running longer than that and doing more work in any one year than any navy yard crane in the United States has ever done since the first one was - bought. But no; here is the item for the track extension, $75,000. The length of the new dry dock where this track is to 752 ft. making the cost about $520,000 a mile. Money is again asked for widening the 600-ft. channel at Norfolk "be- cause it is too narrow 40° turn a Tae Marine REVIEW naval ship." Any officer that cannot turn any ship in the navy in a 600- nnel is a dub. : sate general opinion of the handling of naval ships by their officers has been previously noted and comparison made with the work of ship masters of the great lakes. Naval Officer's Amazement on the Lakes. | There has just come to hand as this is being written an expression from a naval officer who had made a trip from Lake Erie to Duluth on one of these inland steamships. The ship he trav- eitel in has a| displacement nearly as great as the biggest battleship in the navy, but low-powered and unhandy by Jt Was his first. yisit to ~d he said, "I have been uw, the navy depart- ad what. 4° have ~ 1 on my trip comparison: the great lake, ah sailing the Cee ans j ment for 25 Ses ae learned of lake ni. 24. has been a revelationtie~ I a 19 say that as pilots and Ye: ~ andling ve the of big ships the lake skippk : other sailors beaten to a stands. "I am positive there is not a tos the navy department who could safe} bring one of the big lake ships from Lake Erie to Duluth." Of course what the sailor calls "local knowledge' has some bearing on the case, but what the officer quite evidently had in mind was the handling of the ships, and he only admitted what every steamship master knows. lt is no won- der that Admiral Goodrich has a spasm in when he contemplates the locks in the o Panama canal. The officials of the de- partment nearly had heart failure over taking the battleship Mississippi up the Mississippi river a few miles where there is width and depth enough almost any- where except at the Pass for a fleet. The inevitable crane track is also needed at Norfolk, and $20,000 is want- ed for only one rail alongside the dry dock. For a bending shed $175,000 is asked and a smithery $150,000. There is no such money invested in these items in the busiest ship building plant in the country. The naval prisons are among the hardest worked part of the equipment if the estimates are any indication. Portsmouth needs $250,000 to complete the one under way and wants it at once. It also wants a foundry at the same price. A pretty good foundry can be built for that money; one that can turn out more work than that at Portsmouth ever will can be built, with its equipment, for half of it. Key West also wants "a large well equipped foun- dry," but puts the price at $50,000. Probably a few figures inadvertentiy .S November, 1909 _ omitted. Puget Sound wants a conerete an- chor park at $5,000. Grading and con- creting for the storage of all the an- chors in the navy can be done at that price with room to spare, The Iniquitous Special Item. One of the most iniquitous features of the whole report is the "Special Item" regarding an appropriation for dredges for the department. It charges that there is a combination amongsy dredging contractors and quotes the cost of dredging done by the army. The army has never dredged a yard of material in its history at as low a 'cost as it can have it done by private concerns. By its own method ot figuring it can, and so can the navy but those methods are not even honest, They include no charge for interest, depreciation, management, insurance, taxes nor profit. Those things come out of the taxpayer just as thougn the contractor did the work and any effort to secure funds based on such a showing should be reprehended. Look at the time and money spent in dry docks by army. dredges referred to above. Private dredges could not even ive under such management, and this figured in government costs a es not * ither. I € : bine Observations in a Navy Yard. *Recent observations in some of the y yards will not be out of place =>. Within a few weeks I watched '2 men take 10 minutes to pick up d ' arry a 16-ft, length of 3-in. angie, ue nang under 125 Ib. about 20 yds, oo "small hand-car and the whole s "?xhaust themselves pushing the oT . 7 1 its burden along _ the fe awe I saw three men_help- a : . t 4 to cut up scrap, by look- ing on with all their might, The ma- : ae was a large gate shear chine in use me designed for large heavy work, i ', weighed a few pounds. Pieces of scrap a ce a side dump car haa At another pla 1 over dumped th r four tons of coal over | oe d part of it had a conveyor hop} ast and p ae to be shoveled } nto the hopper. i -. 9 up a bit of canvas as six men rigging ~ UP i them from the an awning to screen ; shoveled the coal, an sun while they i } e ke notes. was intere enough to ma oT inutes to It took the wy gnole: six 25 m : tig their awnj ng and 20 minutes finish the coalf. | One man might saa have done th p actual necessary WOT in 15 minuteMil, All this in the New York yard. Under the stern of the Florida on stocks a compressed air hose ¢ blew out and the r, ee e wate : the -oupling hose. dropped into the