Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1756-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities external link and the Library of Congress. Learn more
Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Newspaper Page Text
normal shipyard area. Materials flow through the yards in never-ending streams, swung through the air by monster cranes. When a Kaiser ship hit the water on launch ing day, it was a ship, not just the hull. The engines, pumps, smokestacks, winches, instru ments, fittings were already in place, lowered by gargantuan cranes used heretofore only in dam building. Never before had ship builders handled such weights. If they had to weld the bottom of a bulkhead, or a deck structure, or a prow, the cranes turned it up side down to make the welding easier and faster. When the cabin section left the fabri cating plant it was complete, even to the painting, the bunks and life belts. Recently I was at Richmond when one of the last of the British Victory Ships sailed. “When we turned her over to the crew,” exclaimed a Kaiser executive, with pride, “she was complete to tea in the galley.” High Pressure The dynamo who is achieving this greatest shipbuilding feat of all time is an almost mythical character whom few of his own workmen have ever seen. This is because Kaiser spends most of his time shuttling between his unpre tentious office in Oakland and gov ernment offices in Washington. Kaiser travels with two or three en gineering aides, does his work in bedrooms of hotels or fast trains. Yet scarcely a day passes but that he has- his fingers on the pulse of every yard and plant in his scat tered empire, by means of long distance telephone hook-ups with his executives. I hese conierences cost rum a quarter of a million dollars a year in tolls. In person, Henry Kaiser is far from the popular conception of a relentless driver of men. His manner with the younger men who get his jobs done is that of a patient professor. He takes infinite time to sell his ideas to his organization, and makes sure that everybody agrees on every point in a building program. He dotes on machinery, but says, “The secret of handling big construction jobs fast is man power, not money or machines.” Henry Kaiser was bom in Canajohane, New York, to a family so poor that he quit school at 11 to work for a journeyman photog rapher. At 19, he bought out his employer, spent his winters in Florida and his summers at Lake Placid, New York, taking pictures of tourists. At the latter resort, one of his sub jects was lively Bessie Fosburgh from Boston, whom he persuaded to become his wife. Fortunately, the young woman’s guardian uncle considered photography too precarious a livelihood for the husband of his niece, so young Kaiser abandoned his cameras and migrated West in search of a more substantial business. This he found in Spokane, selling sand and gravel and cement. From that, Kaiser moved nto street and highway paving just as the aew gasoline taxes began to yield a bonanza to lift the country out of the mud with con crete highways. On his jobs, Kaiser always used bigger machinery to move earth and rock and cement faster than it had ever been han dled before. He tried out any promising new idea that he or any of his men could dream up. Other contractors laughed at him when he first used rubber-tired wheelbarrows, but quickly bought them when Kaiser proved that men moved twice as much sand per day with less effort when the stuff rolled on rub ber. While building 200 miles of highways in Cuba, he heard that the federal government was asking for bids on the fifty-million-dollar Boulder Dam. This project called for pouring what was to be, at that time, the world’s most colossal man-made monolith, harness ing the country’s most turbulent river. The job was more than Kaiser could swing alone, but he persuaded several other Western builders to join him as partners and landed the contract. Before Boulder Dam was fin ished, 18 months ahead of schedule, Kaiser was ready to take on a still more difficult engineering feat — damming the Columbia at Bonneville. Many builders insisted Bonne ville couldn’t be constructed at all, because of the deep, swift and treacherous current. To the amazement of the engineering world, Kaiser turned the construction job over to his son Edgar, then 27, and Clay P. Bedford, 29 — the two spark plugs who now head his groups of yards* in the Portland and Rich mond areas. The “kids” pushed the river to one side with coffer dams, built half of Bonne ville Dam, pushed the river back again, and built the other half, completing it just in time to take over the job of constructing the larg est dam of all time, Grand Coulee, a concrete monster three times the bulk of Boulder Dam. Meantime, Kaiser unaertooK to pour the concrete piers for the world’s largest bridge, between San Francisco and Oakland — veritable solid concrete skyscrapers. That bridge is the only great piece of construction Kaiser likes to go back and see. His interest wanes the minute the problems in a project are solved. He has never even seen the completed Bonneville or Grand r Coulee dams. » It was cement that indirectly launched Kaiser in shipbuilding. /mmAnt f/\r n»»ra1 rlofonco mnctnir tion, he bought two old ships, sent them to a Puget Sound yard for overhauling. There he met John Reilly, head of the Todd Shipyard Corporation. Reilly foresaw the coming ship building boom, and Kaiser sensed a big build ing job for Ais men. They joined up, Reilly supplying the experience, Kaiser the man power. Their first yard at Richmond, California, was built to construct 30 freighters for the British. Before the order was completed, Kaiser’s revolutionary shipbuilding ideas proved too much for the old-line ship men. The partnership was dissolved early in 1941. The Todd Company concentrated on naval work, Kaiser on cargo carriers. Big Plan* Some of the Kaiser side interests are per forming mass-production feats as remarkable as his shipyards. The Joshua Hendy Iron Works at Sunnyvale, Calif., zoomed from a 100-man payroll to 2,800 in two years to rush fabrication of 550 steam engines for cargo vessels. Another project is a ten-million-dollar plant to produce magnesium for bombs and air craft construction. His newest daydream is a steel mill which is already under construc tion near San Bernardino, Calif. It will be the first smelter on the Pacific Coast, and by the end of the year, the Kaiser yards will be turning out ships made with their own Western steel. Right now, all of Henry Kaiser’s overflow ing energy and that of his executives is going into the war effort. But Yard No. 3 at Rich mond offers a clue to his vision of the future. Here, after the war, Kaiser expects to build large ships so radically designed that a small crew of highly-paid American seamen can operate them in competition with cheap labor foreign lines. Once the war is won, he predicts, the Amer ican merchant marine will never again be pushed off the seven seas. The End Ilia workmen wea government medal _* Ar. 7AST START. Kaiser workers spread the job over vast areas, build their ships in big hunks. This is a bottom section BIO LIFT. Huge cranes that used to work on Coulee Dam pick up the prefabricated sections* fit them together on the ways FINISHED JOB. Building time for Kaiser’s ships is now 46 days, soon may be cut to 30. Previous average: eight to ten months