Keel
laying at Todd Houston, long before the yard itself was completed, drastically
increased production costs. Compare this photograph with pictures of
completed
yards.
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Keel
laying at Todd Houston, long before the yard itself was completed, drastically
increased production costs. Compare this photograph with pictures of
completed
yards.
| Construction work is being executed
on a 24 hour basis. Two night shifts consist of relatively few men. There
are severeal reasons for this small labor [illegible]. Firstly, we are
are working on four ships at present, keel for the fourth hull having been
laid today. We have but three cranes servicing these four ways, which means
that the crane service is heavily taxed. Until more cranes are available,
we cannot lay keels on the other two ways. Secondly, delays in deliveries
of certain plates are causing further delay in increasing our manload.
We are at present erecting all available material as soon as possible.
Additional men at this time would be of no use in that there is not sufficient
work to keep them busy. Thirdly, we are preassembling our material in sections
as much as is possible. However, due to the fact that much oif our preassembly
area is either unserviced by cranes or is unavailable due to incompleted
facilities, we are limited to a great extent in performing this work. Were
such space available, it would be possible to greatly increase our man
hours of productive labor.
T.R. Allen to Schmetlzer,
Jan 7, 1942.
Original in Records of the Historian's Office Box 17, Records of the USMC [RG178], National Archives. |
The following graphs plot an index
of the amount of authorized capital at each of six yards. For comparison,
cumulative deliveries of Liberty ships and labor productivity are also
plotted. Actual installed capital lagged the authorizations by several
months. The graphs show how the amount of capital at each yard rose substantially
between 1941 and 1943. The same is true for cumulative output and productivity.
Hence, a study that does not have the capital data will attribute all of
the rise in labor productivity to experience (as measured by cumulative
output) when in fact worker productivity also rose as a result of capital
investment.
The source for
these data was found damaged in the National Archives and sheets for the
remaining yards are missing. Detailed capital authorizations by date are
available for (number of Liberty ships delivered in parethenses): Bethlehem-Fairfield
(384), Calship (336), Delta (188), North Carolina (126), Oregon (330) and
Todd-Houston (208). These six yards account for a little over 50 percent
of all Liberty ship production.
Capital Investment, labor productivity, and cumulative output at six yards.
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