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Labor History
The Inter-War Era
Introduction
In the
years around 1900, the BNY transformed the islet in Wallabout Bay into
a major staging area connected to the shore by rail and road.
During
the Great War the Yard underwent
a great burst of building, adding a second
building
ways and other major facilities to a facility where much of the
physical structure dated back to the Civil War and before
[e.g., Dry Dock 1]. Contractors performed much of this
construction using their own workers.
In the 1920s, funding dried up not only for shipbuilding but also for
the navy
yards themselves; not only did establishments like the BNY fail to
receive funding for any further construction, but drastically-cut
budgets also left the Yard in a constant struggle to keep
its shops clean and the soggy dry docks
in working order, labor generally performed by its own employees.
In one egregious example, by 1929 Dry Dock 2 had degraded so badly the
Navy took it out of
commission. This desperate situation worsened during the
early years of the Depression as the government cut back even further
on its appropriations.
During the Hoover years, Congress managed
to appropriate some funding to navy yards for maintenance
projects but generally did so on an ad
hoc
basis. The Roosevelt
administration took a different tack, extending its substantial
stimulus and public
assistance programs to the shore establishments themselves as well as
to warships they built, putting thousands to
work on a substantial number
of physical-plant projects. Much of this work of the 1930s was done
with public-assistance labor, then greatly augmented late in the decade
and early 1940s by private
companies working on contract using their own labor. This labor, like that of
the corresponding warship production, proved almost
providential in a sense, for when the country entered
the second world war its navy yards were
already mostly prepared for the struggle, far advanced in a program of
repair, renovation, and new construction.
The Hoover Years:
The Dry
Dock #2 Project
Wallabout
Bay had always been hard on dry
docks. The bay, swamp and marsh in colonial times, had
since seen much of its shoreline landfilled by the city
of Brooklyn and the navy yard, which also dredged out
a shipping canal about a staging islet built up in the middle of the
bay. Dry docks one through
four, as
well as a fair number of shops had therefore been built mostly on
land of indeterminate composition, and whose
water level rose and fell with the tides.
[see
West, History]
The Navy built Dry Dock Two in lumber in the years 1887-1890 at a
cost of $600,000 and it immediately began to fall apart in its muddy
site. A
year later it was rebuilt in concrete at a similar cost. By 1910
some of its altars [the set-back steps of the walls] needed
replacement,
and all of them were refurbished in 1913-1914, the two projects coming
in at $30,000. Five thousand dollars more of repairs went into
the dock's
entrance in 1925. By November 1929 the Yard found the dock
once again in bad condition, its walls cracked and much of the concrete
softened. Engineers suggested the whole dock be rebuilt in
granite but realizing the cost to be prohibitive they asked that only
the
entrance way and the head of the dock be so constructed. They
also recommended refacing the altars with concrete and
that the dry dock be lengthened as it could now hold no contemporary
ships larger than a destroyer. [Letter,
Commandant, to Chief of the
Bureau of yards and Docks; 13 November 1929; RG181; NA-NY.]
But another
inspection shortly thereafter by the Yard's Public Works Office
revealed
the dry dock to be in even poorer shape than first reported, especially
as to the constituency of the concrete and forecast it to be only a
matter of time before the
dry dock fell apart. Based on this report the Commandant took the
dock
out of commission on 2 December
1929. And there the matter stood for over a year.
Architects turned out several reconstruction plans but no money was
appropriated for any of them.
[Memo, PWO, to Commandant; 2 December 1929; Letter,
Commandant, to Chief of the BY&D; 2 December 1929; Letter, Chief of
BuDocks, to Commandant, NY
Navy Yard, 16 January 1930; Letter, Chief of BuDocks, to Commandant, 3
March 1930; memo, Commandant, to Chief of
BuSandA; 22 January 1931; RG181; NA-NY.]
On 6
February 1931, Congress, now
convinced of the Depression's permanency, passed a bill
called the
Emergency Act to
boost the economy with public-work
projects. Among its many provisions was $749,000 for the
reconstruction of BNY's dry Dock 2. Though the Yard
lacked
sufficient drafting and technical staff, and lower-level supervisors,
as
well as a full set of plans, the Yard's Public Works Department
began the work immediately due to the "various serious
employment
situation," establishing a special section for the job with
its own supervisor. The Yard used its own labor for most of the
construction, contracting out only that work it was not technically
capable of doing itself, such as building the cofferdam [the temporary
wall
blocking the pit from the bay]. Navy yard employees tore out the
old
dock and rebuilt it almost from scratch, the men working
on shifts in order
to spread the work among as many of them as possible.
The Commandant
praised the swiftness and "vigor" of the work, which was completed a
month early and within budget. On 27 July 1932, the dry dock was
placed back in commission. [Letter,
Commandant, to Chief of
BuDocks; 29
December 1932; RG181; NA-NY]
The project
was not without its human costs though. Thirteen laborers and
five wharfbuilders were injured badly enough to qualify for
federal-worker compensation, and a fourteenth laborer was killed
outright, when
a three-ton slab of concrete collapsed on them. The official
report
chose not to apportion human responsibility for the accident but
instead saw the falling molding
as a misfortunate example of
how badly the dock's walls had deteriorated. [Memo, Project
Superintendent, to PWO; 18 March
1932; Letter, Commandant, to US Compensation
Commission; 30 March 1932; RG181; NA-NY.]
Near the end of his administration President Hoover and
Congress did attempt to stimulate the economy through more organized federal spending. In
January 1932 Congress introduced a bill to "accelerate public
construction in periods of business depression through the creation of
an Administration of Public Works and to provide for a more effective
coordination and correlation of the public-works functions of the
government," under the control of an Administrator of Public
Works. Construction and maintenance of the military establishment
was included in the bill. In comments on the bill, Secretary of
the Navy Charles Adams noted that while the Navy Department is a
military organization, structured solely for that purpose, that the
Bureau of Yards and Docks was "to all intents and purposes a Public
Works Administration of the Navy; an integral part of it." A number of
projects were authorized for the Ben in July, such as an overhaul of
the
power plant and general maintenance. However, it was too little too
late in terms of giving Hoover a chance at re-election, but the bill
did preview the type of programs that were
soon to be instituted. [See web chapter: 1932
- A Policy Formal and Otherwise Develops;
Letter, Adams, to Chairman, Com. on
Executive Depts, H.R.; 28 January 1932; RG181; NA-NY.]
Top
The Early New Deal
Years:
FERA/TERA/CWA
From a
slow start, state and federally sponsored public-assistance labor
became a mainstay of the renovation and construction of
the country's navy yards during the pre-war Roosevelt years. In
addition to
the PWA money legislated directly for
warship construction by navy yard employees, Congress set up
various
programs to put other
people to work on government civilian and military projects. On
12 May 1933 the Federal
Emergency
Relief Administration (FERA)
was created and word came down to the Navy Department (and other
government agencies) that
considerable
funds were now available for increasing employment for work "not
otherwise provided for." This labor could be used only for those
projects not funded
under current appropriations and
that would most likely never be, given the then present budgetary
constraints. Civil-service workers could not be displaced in
favor of relief
workers and the law authorized only minimal spending for
materials, mostly for maintenance and upkeep. Shore stations
though could loan tools, left-over material, and transportation
to projects. The Department
surveyed its shore establishments for recommendations. This would
begin a near decade-long intimate collaboration of the BNY with a
series of not only non-military federal agencies but also with New York
State and City social agencies as well. [Letter, Assistant
Secretary of Navy (H.L.
Roosevelt), to Commandant(s
of Naval Districts), 15 July 1933; RG181; NA-NY. For general
background, see: Nick Taylor, American-made:
The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work.]
On his very
preliminary consideration of the matter during the summer the new ASN,
H. L. Roosevelt,
thought it
"undesirable" to use relief labor within any naval station that
employed a
large
number of civilians, recommending that such labor be used for
outside work such as clearing brush, cutting firelanes and building
roads, and on indoor clerical activities such as putting old archives
in
order. Taking the ASN's advice as his cue, the Third Naval
District Commandant passed on the
Department's request to the
BNY Commandant, wondering if he knew of any sites such as radio
stations which could use FERA labor, to which the Commandant in late
July replied in
the negative. [Letter, ASN, to Commandant(s
of Naval Districts), 15 July 1933; Letter, Commandant, Third
Naval District, to the Commandant, New
York Navy Yard, 19 July 1933; Letter, Commandant, to Commandant, Third
Naval District, 26 July 1933; RG181; NA-NY.]
It took
only a week for the BNY commandant only a week to have second thoughts. The Yard had long wanted to re-organize
its old records, some of which the staff accessed
on a regular basis, but a project for which it had never received
funding. Seeing an opportunity, the commandant requested of his
superior that FERA assign them eight
clerk for three
to four months to reorganize the old
files. The memo was forwarded to the ASN and the
Navy Department quickly approved it as well as several
projects submitted from other shore stations,
asking that reports be periodically submitted detailing progress. [Letter,
Commandant, to Commandant, Third Naval
District, 1 August 1933; Letter, Commandant, Third Naval District, 3
August 1933; Letter, ASN, to Commandants (of all Naval Districts), 17
August 1933; and passed on to BNY Commandant, 31
August 1933. All in RG181; NA-NY.]
The central FERA office in
Washington
then informed New York State's office of the Temporary
Emergency Relief Administration (TERA)
of the BNY's request and
in October 1933 it notified the Yard that it had a pool of
"white
collar" people, including professionals such as engineers, architects
and accountants, from which the BNY could draw upon,
immediately.
The Yard Manager requested 16 people from
TERA for
about five months to work on old Yard records dealing with
pay rolls,
labor, and the physical plant, the workers to be split into two
alternating weekly shifts of eight
each, at a
cost of $3840, with a manager clerk in
charge. The pay rate set by TERA worked out to $24 per
each six-day work
week, or $4.00 per day for each relief-clerk.
The TERA office sent the sum to the Yard, which then paid the
workers. Although the relief office covered their
wages, the Yard
retained the ability to set
their hours and directly supervise their work. About the same time, the
ASN
informed the naval districts that the navy
would supply necessary materials,
tools, and equipment. [TERA was founded in New York State in
November 1931, under FDR's governorship. See: Taylor, American-made. Letter, Myers,
TERA, NY Office, to Commanding Officer,
USN, US Navy Yard, Brooklyn, NY, 26 October 1933; Letter, ASN
(H.L. Roosevelt), to Commandant, Third Naval
District, 27 October 1933; Letter, Manager, to Myers, 31 October 1933; Letter, C.P.
Peoples, Bureau of Supplies and Accounts, to
Commandant, Navy Yard, NY, 8 November 1933; Memo, Commandant, to
Accounting Officer, [and] the Disbursing Officer, 3 November 1933.
Also, see the monthly "TERA
Report," covering the project: "Resorting,
reclassifying and refiling of old records, archives, etc., addressed to
the state's Adjutant-General. All
in: RG181; NA-NY.]
In early December
1933 the FERA/TERA program was subsumed into the Civil Works
Administration and the Navy worked up a much more extensive,
national set of projects for the new agency to undertake. The
national office quickly approved the list and forwarded them on to the
respective CWA
state organizations. Its mandate allowed for a maximum of twenty per
cent of a project's
budget to be spent on supplies, and the Navy authorized its shore
stations to supplement this with
any available surplus material. Stations could also rent
equipment and tools if needed. Naval officers in charge of a CWA
project needed to apply for workers through the
local CWA office, which in turn acquired the
necessary people from local relief rolls. CWA
supervisory pay corresponded as much as possible to the
Yard's civilian managers, leadingmen and quartermen, ranging from $90
to
$200 a
month. The new regulations forbade using CWA
funds to pay
local naval civilian
supervisors, contract projects, or for buying land. [The CWA was founded in November 1933.
See: Taylor, American-made.
Letter, ASN, to Commandants (of Naval
Districts, and
others), 4 December 1933; RG181; NA-NY; "Federal CWA Rules and
Regulations no. 4, Federal Projects," enclosed in Letter, ASN to
AN&MCAC, 4 December 1933; RG80; NA-DC.]
The BNY quickly submitted
and received approval for two additional CWA projects, one for painting
and the other for repairing roads and railroads. The Third District
Commandant emphasized
that as "the object is to put men to work, the full number of men
allotted to each project must be put to work at the earliest
practicable time." By mid-December 1933, the following
public-assistance projects were under way in the BNY:
Project 1: Resorting, refiling old
records
|
2
supervisors
|
$5.55/day
|
8
file/records clerks
|
|
5
file/index clerks
|
|
4
typists
|
|
1
librarian (typing)
|
|
Project 2: Painting
|
3
leader painters
|
$9.33/day
|
25
painters
|
9.00
|
1
leader joiner
|
11.43
|
6
joiners
|
10.50
|
4
helper laborers
|
4.20
|
Project 3: Railroad repair
|
1
timekeeper
|
24.00
|
1
leader laborer
|
4.70
|
13
laborers
|
4.20
|
3
trackmen
|
5.25
|
2
pavers |
12.37
|
The BNY
requested two more projects in December: conducting a topographical and
subsurface survey of the Yard to update its files on the subject; and,
systematically cleaning the interior walls, windows and roof trusses of
some of the yard's shops. The Navy Department
approved the topographic project, but thought the cleaning project
did not come under relief guidelines. [Letter, Commandant, Third
Naval District, to Commandant, New
York Navy Yard, 7 December 1933;
Letter, Dungan, to Whitney, Chairman, CWA, City of NY, 12
December 1933; Form, CWA, City of NY, for U.S.N.Y., Brooklyn, N.Y. 1
January 1934. Also, see various
documents outlining the
regulations about CWA/Navy projects are included in: Letter,
Commandant, Third Naval District, to (his
stations, including) the Commandant, New York Navy Yard, 15 December
1933. Memo,
Commandant, to Paymaster-General, 22 December 1933; RG181;
NA-NY.]
As the CWA programs
at the Yard fell into shape in early 1934, and with that, a number of
bureaucratic problems soon arose. As
might be expected, offices needed to remind their managers that relief
clerical
staff were available only for their assigned projects and not to be
used
for other work. In January, the federal CWA standardized the
acquisition of relief labor by passing on instructions from the
National Reemployment
Service that workers must be hired through
local employment agencies designated by the US Employment Service, or
through union locals. Only if project managers could not find
people locally could they search for them from more distant locales. And a question of a different type arose:
did relief workers in the Yard
have access to the naval
hospital if necessary, as did the regular workers? [Letter,
ASN, to Commandant, Navy Yard, NY, 5 January 1934; Memo, Public
Works Officer, to Medical Officer, 6 January 1934; Memo, Dungan,
Manager, to Heads of Departments and Offices where CW
Service Workers are assigned, 17 January 1934; Letter, ASN, to Commandants and COs of all
Stations doing C.W.A. Work, 2 March 1934, enclosing a copy of a memo of
26 January 1934, from Harry L. Hopkins, Administrator, FCWA, D.C., to
All Federal Departments having Civil Works Projects, and to All Field
Supervisors in charge of such projects. RG181;
NA-NY.]
In
February, the U.S. Employees' Compensation
Commission
decided to grant CWA workers on
government projects medical benefits comparable to those of
regular federal
employees, and payable from its own funds. The Administration
improved on this by extending practically all legal and administrative
regulations
covering federal employees as per the basic 1916 compensation
law.
ASN Henry Roosevelt noted that the public-relief program then employed
four million people, including about 12,000 on naval
reservations. As
the CWA regulations suggested medical care be given by
government services wherever possible, the Navy Department thereby took
on
responsibility for the occupational health and safety of its relief
workers. It told shore establishments to send injured CWA workers
to
the local Dispensary and not let them be treated by other CWA workers
or
supervisors. In return, the Navy informed CWA workers that they
had to conform to all
its
safety rules and regulations and placed CWA Safety Inspectors under the advice of
a yard's Safety Inspector. AS most of these relief workers were
new to the dangers of navy yards the ASN
speculated that the number of injuries and diseases might be
"considerable." [Letter, ASN H. Roosevelt, to
Hopkins, 4 January 1934; RG80; NA-DC; Circular Letter, Acting
Secretary Navy, to ANMCAC, 9 February
1934; RG181; NA-NY.]
BNY projects also ran into
budgetary
difficulties. In mid-January 1934 the ASN passed on his
expectation
that the present CWA appropriation, scheduled to expire on 15 February,
would be extended until at least 30 April, and in light of
this he requested that the shore stations submit proposals for new
projects as soon as possible. But only a day
later and before the Yard received this message word came down from the
state CWA
office that since average weekly CWA wages had exceeded the original
estimates, it was ordering an immediate cutback in hours in order
to keep within the relief budget. Blue collars working in
municipalities with over 250 people got their hours reduced to a
maximum of 24 hours per
week, and those working in smaller communities were dropped to 15 hours
per
week. For clericals,
professionals, and supervisors, the new rules allowed a more gracious
maximum of
30 hours a week. Also, the CWA placed a freeze on hirings except
for
replacing a person in an already established
position. [Letter, ASN, to
(all Naval District Commandants and others), 18 January 1934; forwarded
by District Office to Commandant, Navy Yard, NY on 22 January 1934;
Letter, Commandant, Third Naval District, to Commandant, Navy Yard,
(and others), 19 January 1934;
Telegram, SecNav, to All Naval Stations, 19 January 1934, forwarded to
Navy Yard, 20 January 1934. For an outline of the CWA
program and its regulations: Letter, ASN, to Commandants (all NDs and
others); 25 January 1934; forwarded to Commandant, NYNY, 30
January 1934. RG181: NA-NY.]
This edict did not prevent
BNY management from devising new projects. In
early February the staff had already worked up three new plans, even
"borrowing" some CWA draftsmen
to assist them. However, about one week after submitting them to
the national CWA for approval, word came down from the Washington
office that not
only were no new CWA projects being approved but that each station had
to reduce its number of CWA
employees by one-third by 25 February, then by one-tenth more each
week, such that all relief workers would be gone by 30 April. No
reason was given for the
phasing out. As the
ASN reported, there were 12,000 CWAers at the naval and marine stations
that now had to be all
released by 30 April despite the recent
assurances that the Department had received that their ongoing plus
many new
projects would be renewed and approved. [Memo, Angas, to Burrell,
BuDocks, DC, 10 February 1934; Letter, Dungan, to CWA, NYC, 10 February
1934; Letter, Commandant, Third Naval
District, to Commandant, Navy Yard, New York, (and
others), 15 February 1934; RG181; Letter, ASN, to Commandants and COs of all
Stations doing CWA work, 23
February 1934; NA-NY. See below
for projects.]
Both the City and state
CWA offices kept the potential disaster at bay by having the federal
CWA projects transferred to New York City CWA cognizance. That
first one-third
of the workers was quickly "transferred" on paper to city projects
allowing
the Yard's to lop them off on their official report to
Washington. The state and city
CWA organizations came up with funds and by the end of February the
City CWA assured the Yard that monies would be allocated to cover the
cost of materials
for the additional proposed CWA projects at the Yard, with the
understanding that the labor would be furnished by local CWA
organizations and be listed as "local projects," with no charges being
made
to federally allocated funds. As workers were laid off the
federal projects per schedule they would be be kept on as city CWA
project workers at their present jobs, with one reservation, that the
local projects would receive no materials. [Memorandum of
telephone
conversation, Bakenhaus, to HQ of Commandant of Third Naval
District, 16 February 1934; Letter, Angas, to CWA (NYC), att: T.H.P.
Farr, 25 February 1934; Letter, Dungan, to CWA (NYC), 28 February 1934;
RG181; NA-NY.]
By early March 1934 the
ASN reported that the BNY's CWA projects would extend through the
end of April
and that it was likely that State Relief Work programs would supersede
the State CWA after that. Funding would be
furnished part by states and their political subdivisions, and part by
the federal government. In some cases shore stations even
benefited when some cities and counties were unable to come up with
enough suitable work to meet their City/County
quotas, leaving the naval sites to pick up the extra people as a kind
of bonus to their otherwise assigned quotas. The ASN
found the situation "satisfactory" and hoped that the projects could be
continued as Relief Work after the CWA ended. [Letter,
ASN, to
Commandant(s, all Naval Districts), 7 March
1934; RG181; NA-NY.]
Yard CWA work
continued, the three new projects starting on 13 March listed on the
books
as New York City
relief work, with CWAers working two three-day shifts. Many of
the
dirtiest industrial buildings now began to receive their first cleaning
and painting in many years (if ever). The mold loft, smith,
sheetmetal, and boiler shops, foundry, and hull divisions shops had top
priority for the work. Window cleaning however, though urgently
needed, was denied as a CWA project. [Letter, Commandant,
to
ASN(NYD), 10 March 1934. For a full list of projects, see:
Memo, Production Officer, to Public Works
Officer, 13 March 1934; Memo, Public Works Officer, to Production
Officer, 22 March 1934; RG181; NA-NY.]
CWA hiring practices
caused something of a stir as laid-off BNY civil-service employees
found they could not obtain the relief jobs. This was a problem
with all the navy yards. One Department officer complained
that bringing CWA workers into the yards at the same time they were
laying off their own employees was bad for morale. The BNY
Commandant
asked the Administrator of the federal CWA in New York
City why the CWA could not give preference to its
furloughed workers,
especially as there was then a lull in work due to the completion of
the New Orleans and the
launching of the destroyer Hull.
The administrator passed
the buck, saying the CWA did not hire directly, but instead
requisitioned labor from the National Reemployment Service when
needed. They in turn submitted the names they selected to
the
Department of Public Welfare for certification as to their relief
qualifications. In fact, as of then the CWA was not adding to its
payrolls and had orders to reduce its force, although they expected
that new
regulations to arrive after 31 March might ameliorate the
situation. But even he was otherwise of no help to the BNY the
administrator, DeLamater, did want Commandant Stirling to realize that
he was "always
glad to
cooperate with the regular service every way I can."
[Memorandum,
Brinser, to ASN, 23 January 1934; RG80; NA-DC; Letter,
Sterling, to DeLamater, Administrator, FCWA,
NYC, 10 March 1934, and reply from DeLameter, 14 March 1934; RG181;
NA-NY.]
Despite that reassurance federal
administrator Hopkins
sent notice to disband state and local CWA organizations on 31 March
and to transfer their work to the Works
Divisions of the various State
Emergency Relief Administrations. In New York that meant
reverting back to TERA. This order did not
affect any work under federal quotas,
which included some of the labor on the first three Yard projects, but
a separate directive came out ordering that work to end by
1 May. To keep continuity in the work, in most cases, the
present CWA
officials stayed in charge of the now ERA work. Stirling
impressed on DeLameter how essential relief work
was to the BNY as funds for these projects would never be allotted
through the regular navy budget, and sent some of his top
people to meet with him to discuss the Yard's relief work. [Letter,
ASN, to Commandant, Navy Yard, NY (and
others), 23 March 1934, plus handwritten notes thereon; Letter,
Commandant, Third Naval District, to Commandant, Navy Yard, NY, (and
others), 28 March 1934;
Letter, Stirling, to Col. DeLamater, Administrator,
CWA, 25 March 1934; RG181; NA-NY.]
The BNY continued to
submit plans. First, the staff wanted to hire its full quota of
320
relief workers, presently only having 225 people assigned to its
relief
projects. It was essential, they said, to acquire
more painters, carpenters,
and laborers, and they repeated the point that much desirable work
could only only be funded through relief allocations. In May 1934
the
Yard's quota was expanded to 356 people, with extra painters and clerks
making up much of the
difference. The
new program did have strict stipulations though. The supervisor
and a
few of his immediate staff could work 39-hour weeks, but other
white-collars could work only 30 hours per week, and blue-collars
were restricted to 44-48 hours per month. The ERA budget assigned
the Yard
a total of 28,848
man-hours per month at a cost of $18,620. [On the project, for
instance, the Yard wanted 16 clerk/typists but received 24; wanted 50
carpenters, but received 45; wanted 158 painters, but received 200;
wanted 54 laborers, but received 48. Says more about who was
unemployed at the time. Letter, Dunn, to Farr, Works
Division, Dept. of
Welfare, 19 April 1934; Letter, Commandant, to ASN, 2 May 1934; (Form)
Letter, Macy,
Chief Engineer, Works Div., Dept. of Public Welfare, NYC, to Capt.
Parsons, 12 May 1934; RG181; NA-NY.]
The Yard lobbied
incessantly for relief work. In mid-May the Commandant sent
his Manager and Public Works Officer to visit Borough President Raymond
Ingersoll to petition for further relief assistance, telling him how
impressed they were with the ERA's
work in the BNY. Previously dark and gloomy shops had led to
inadequate work and poor morale, but relief painters
had helped rectify this situation, cleaning and brightening up the
interior
walls of many shops, including the building
housing the Labor Employment Office. Relief labor had improved
working conditions and efficiency in the navy yard and the Yard wanted
more of it. The Commandant's representatives also
reminded the Borough President, as it had proved to be a "practical
impossibility" to receive congressional allotments for these projects,
that the relief labor did not deprive the Yard's regular civilian force
of any
jobs. [Letter, Stirling, to Ingersoll,
Borough President, Borough of Brooklyn, 16 May 1934; RG181; NA-NY.]
By late May the relief
labor force had
grown to 376, of whom none worked under a federal quota. The
projects fell
into four major classifications: the original one of filing of old
records and performing general clerical duties; the transporting of
stores from the
Naval Supply Depot in southern Brooklyn to and about the Yard;
conducting a
topographical survey of the Navy Yard; and, in terms of numbers, the
largest and most important, the general maintenance tasks of painting
shop buildings, performing various carpentry jobs, repaving streets
with
granite block and relaying railroad tracks.
The Navy Department continued to complement the relief work, the ASN
noting that over 12,000 men had been quickly
recruited [for all U.S. naval projects] from miscellaneous sources,
many of whom had been classified as "below normal
physically" and not experienced in manual labor. The Department
found
particularly gratifying that no fatal accidents or
serious accidents resulting in prolonged disabilities had occurred. [Letter,
Commandant, to ASN(NYD), 22 May 1934.
A complete list of work then being done can be found in: Memo, Tison,
Technical Supervisor, to Public Works Division, 22
May 1934. For a complimentary, official notice, see: Letter, Burrell,
BuDocks, to Capt. Parsons, 24 May 1934; Letter, ASN, to Commandant (of
all Naval Districts), 16 July
1934; RG181; NA-NY.]
With the BNY's relief projects now
securely located within the city's Department of Public Welfare, work
continued through the summer at full speed. Many
minor projects were added such as repairs and reconstructions to the
ceilings,
floors,
and windows of various buildings, and even office desks, chairs and
tables received
repairs and refinishing. One report found that the illumination
in the bay of the
mold loft had increased by forty per cent after it had been cleaned and
painted. The work proved
relatively cheap: from the beginning of 1934 through May $45,728
had been spent, $18,627 from federal money, and $31,991 from State
relief
funds, of which about $10,000 went for materials. The BNY then
was using 367 of a total of 1381 relief workers working for the
Department's naval stations. [Report, Commandant, to ASN, 29
May 1934; Letter, Commandant, to Commandant Third Naval District, 8
June 1934; Memo, Burrell, BuDocks, to Admiral Brinser, 1 June
1934; RG181; NA-NY. For a comprehensive list
of wages and salaries for local relief work see: [n.a.], "Information
Sheet, Weekly Classifications and Rates Effective May 14, 1934, Revised
5 June 1934," and "Schedule of Rates and Maximum Hours of 8 Hour Days
of Work," Works Division, Department of Public Welfare, City of New
York, 11 June 1934; RG181; NA-NY.]
By mid-October many shops
and
offices had been painted, track laid on the Ordnance dock,
and various repairs made to buildings, including the officers'
headquarters (but see below). Relief labor
cleaned and
painted the
Foundry, a mighty task in itself, as well as the Sheetmetal, Copper,
Outside Machine shops,
and the boiler house, with many other minor painting tasks on the
docket
for the near future. The Yard though still had to contend with
vagaries
in the relief budgetary system, such as in October when the city relief
office authorized only 299
workers for that month. [For a list and map of the
projects, see Letter, Parsons, Public Works Officer, to Laughlin,
Borough Engineer, Works Division, Brooklyn, 12 October
1934; Memo, Production Officer, to PWO, 18 October 1934; (Form) letter,
Macy, to
Brooklyn Navy Yard, 12 October 1934; RG181; NA-NY.
]
Once the work programs became
semi-permanent the Works Division office developed various
regulations as to working conditions. It
made provision for per diem workers to make up time lost to
the Election and Armistice days, and Thanksgiving by having them work
other days; it even gave white collars
Thanksgiving off as a paid holiday. The WD issued instructions
that sick days could
be made up within twenty days if the employee presented a
doctor's note. It also ordered relief workers for whom it had
incorrect home addresses, perhaps the staff though for having had to
move due
to Depression pressures, to supply correct ones immediately or lose
their pay.
["Bulletin #109," Wilgus, Director, Works Division, to All
Dept. Heads (and other) Employees of the Works Division, 30 October
1934; Memo, Tison, Field Payroll Supervisor, Emergency
Relief Bureau, WD/NYC, To All 30 Hour Weekly Employees, 19 November
1934; "Bulletin #114," Wilgus, to All
Employees of the Works Division, 19 November 1934; RG181; NA-NY.]
In early November 1934
BNY's Manager, Captain Dunn, went to the Navy Department to request a
increase in funding for supplies for the winter season relief
work. Previously it had
used CWA money for this purpose and Dunn felt that if
the Yard could provide more material it could obtain a
larger
work force, and the Public Welfare Department wanted to spend as
much of its money as possible on labor. The Yard wanted to
continue its interior painting and minor repair programs, as well as
continue and
extend its various clerical projects, all work for which the
Manager reminded the Department it had not allocated
funds. They wanted to increase their WD force from its present
300 people up to 1200 for the upcoming winter and
spring, which given the restrictions on hours that tradesmen could work
meant that an average of about 400 men could work in the Yard on any
one day.
Dunn estimated the cost of supplies for this force to be $75,000 and
suggested that the Navy apply to the Public Works Administration for
the funding and then buy the supplies through the more efficient
navy channels.
Tools and equipment would only cost $3500; the rest would go for
material. The
local relief office approved a November schedule calling for 304
workers at 21,556 man-hours and $20,780.46 for labor, and no other
costs. [Letter, Commandant, to ASN(SED),
1 November 1934;
(Form) Letter, Macy, to BNY, 8
November 1934; RG181; NA-NY.]
Eight relief-draftsmen
working in the Yard's Public Works Department were already drawing
up
plans for future major improvements, and the PWO took the opportunity to ask
the Public Welfare Department to
double
the relief drafting force to sixteen. A larger force would work
up those plans more quickly thereby putting more
people to work sooner, he argued. Drafting was
obviously a task for which funds were regularly allocated, so the BNY
was now following the lead of the Philadelphia Navy Yard in bending the relief laws by using public-assistance labor in place of
civil-service workers. [Letter, Parsons,
PWO, to Laughlin, WD, DPW, Borough Hall, Brooklyn, 7 November
1934; RG181; NA-NY.]
In early November
Hopkins approved the $75,000 PWA allocation. PW Officer
Parsons thanked him profusely acknowledging that they "got it solely
through
your interest in the matter." Parsons quickly passed on the news
to
the Borough Engineer reminding him that the money was contingent on the
relief office providing enough labor to keep
1200-1400 people working through the winter. He
hoped the Yard would receive even more PWA money and repeated his
request
for the extra drafters, who could now work a full 39-hour week instead
of
their present 30. The appeal for more draftsmen was echoed by the
city's relief-labor supervisor at the Yard. [Letter, Harry Hopkins,
Administrator, Federal Emergency Relief Administration, to Capt.
Parsons, PWO, 13 November 1934; Letter, PWO Capt. Parsons, to Hopkins,
16 November; Letter, Parsons, to Laughlin, Borough Engineer, WD, DPW,
13 November 1934; Memo, Tison, Field Payroll Supervisor, to Laughlin,
Asst. Borough
Engineer, 14 November 1934; RG181; NA-NY.]
The Borough relief office
was happy to oblige. The Engineer overseeing the BNY projects said his
office would do whatever it could to
increase the
technicals' hours to 39 per week. His supervisor even went so far
as to designate the
Yard's relief project as "one of the outstanding work projects in the
city, comparing favorably with any contracting job." Since the
navy
provided materials, equipment, aid and cooperation, the work he said,
"represents a low unit cost result, together with enduring
value," and provide a needed "outlet for surplus skilled
and unskilled labor during the winter months." By the end of
November the Yard got most of its extra eight draftsmen, approved for
39-hour
weeks. Bolstered by this, the Manager asked that the hours of
the present technical and drafting force also be increased to 39 hours,
for a total of fifteen men, including the Senior and Assistant
Engineers,
Senior and Junior Draftsmen, and the Senior Engineering
Assistant. [Memo,
Lynch,
Borough Engineer, to Macy, Chief Engineer, 15 November 1934.
Copied in Letter, Laughlin, to Lt. Cmdr. Angas, PWD, 17
November 1934; Letter, Dunn, to Lynch, Borough
Engineer, WD, DPW, 28 November 1934; RG181; NA-NY.]
By the end of the year the
BNY pushed its relief force up to 317: 262 on
blue-collar work; 32 on clerical, and 23 in technical positions.
This came out to 21,925 man-hours for the month, or an average of about
17 hours per week per worker. This average was low because the
regulations still permitted many workers, especially
blue-collars, to work only about 6- 6.5 days spread out
over the month, meaning that only a fraction of the total
force worked any one week. By
the end of 1934
among navy yards, the Brooklyn Navy Yard trailed only the Philadelphia
Navy Yard (though significantly so) in its use of relief labor.
|
11/7/34
|
|
11/21
|
|
11/28
|
|
12/5
|
|
12/12
|
|
12/19
|
|
|
# Workers |
% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
BNY
|
295
|
12
|
289
|
11
|
312
|
12
|
312
|
12
|
316
|
12
|
317
|
11
|
PNY
|
939
|
39
|
1350
|
49
|
1174
|
45
|
1174
|
45
|
1078
|
40
|
1120
|
40
|
Total - Navy Yards
|
2415
|
|
2737
|
|
2598
|
|
2598
|
|
2704
|
|
2815
|
|
The ASN urged all
stations without relief labor to consult with their local and State
officials to apply for as large a relief force working as practicable.
[Letter, Commandant,
to ASN(SED), 3
January
1935;
Letter, Tison, Charles Fernald, Chief
Investigator, Claim Dept., Interborough Rapid Transport Co., 22
March 1935. For a
complete list of stations using relief labor, see Letters, ASN, to
Chief(s) of
BuNav, BuOrd, BuAer, BuEng,
BuMed, 14 November; 3 December; 7 December; 13 December; 21 December;
27 December, 1934; RG181; NA-NY.]
BNY officers planned big for 1935
proposing projects requiring approximately 1305 workers. Other
naval stations had followed the ASN's recommendation and by the end of
February the shore
establishments employed 1500 more relief workers than they had in
November. Philadelphia jumped up to 1655 workers, while
Brooklyn had a modest rise to 338. Yards and stations in
Massachusetts, New Jersey, Washington, Portsmouth, NH, and Minnesota
added to the total of 3906 relief workers on the naval projects. The New York relief agency
failed to
support the BNY's more ambitious
plans though and authorized only about 400 people for its relief rolls
throughout the spring. This figure did climb up to 471 by
August. [Letter, N. November,
Senior
Engineer, WD, Emergency Relief Bureau,
to Lt. Cmdr Angas, 9 January 1935; Letter, ASN, to Chief of
Bureau
of Nav, Ord, Aer, Eng, Med; subject: Relief Labor at Naval Stations, 23
February 1935; Letter, Commandant, to ASN(SED), 24 April
1935; Letter, from Commandant, to
the ASN(SED), 9 August 1935; RG181; NA-NY.]
The larger forces prompted
a new set of guidelines to be issued concerning a growing absenteeism
problem. The BNY public-assistance officer announced that a
relief worker found guilty of being late would have his check
docked a half-hour for being up to 29 minutes tardy, a full hour for
being from 30-59
minutes
late, and proportionally thereafter, with
more than five
latenesses in one month necessitating special disciplinary
action. The Yard would not permit late workers to make up such
lost
time. In July the policy was tightened up so a late worker would
lose an hour's loss of
pay for being only
five minutes tardy, and two hours for being 30-60 minutes late, and
one-half day for those arriving later. With work months often
only six
days
or so such a penalty could represent a substantial loss. [Notice, Tison, Field
Payroll Supervisor,
to All Works
Division Weekly Employees, 5 March
1935; Notice, Anderson, Asst.
Payroll Supervisor, to All Weekly
Workers, 8 July 1935;
RG181; NA-NY.]
Top
Relief
vs. Wage Labor
As might be
expected during these years, the BNY received numerous inquiries about
job openings, many from politicians requesting on behalf of their
constituents. The Yard responded to them,
usually with a form letter, or sometimes as the occasion required, with
personal replies. These letters repeated the standard
assertion that the Yard hired only for permanent positions according to
civil service procedures: applicants went to the Yard's Labor Board for
blue-collar positions, and to the local civil service office in
Manhattan
for clerical and professional jobs. The Yard claimed it held no
jurisdiction for hiring for relief jobs, saying that it was the
responsibility of
the local FERA
office to determine the eligibility of relief applicants. The
Yard could only advise
those looking for such work to present their veteran or furloughed Yard
credentials, if they had any, to the State office and hope for the
best. [An example of a
standard reply is: Letter, Capt. Doyle, Acting Commandant,
to Mr. A.J. DuFrane (of Long Beach, NY), 3 April 1934. Also, see
the letter replying to a wife writing on her husband's behalf: Letter,
Capt. C.A. Dunn, by direction, to Mrs. Elizabeth Nicholson (of
Brooklyn), 29 March 1934; RG181; NA-NY.]
Qualifying for a
relief job could be tricky and applicants often were desperate.
In reply to one advocate's
letter asking about a woman's rejection BNY
management said that although her clerical
skills had proven satisfactory for Yard employment and the local relief
office
had approved her for a spot in the Yard, that, according to what they
heard she had been rejected for a Yard relief job
after two social workers discovered that her father owned a
house or some other piece of property. The Yard could only advise
the advocate to let the woman know that it had a regular opening she
should apply for it. Another applicant
said that while he was
presently an assistant technical supervisor in the Department of
Health he had previously served as a manager for the New York
Harbor Dry Dock Company in Staten Island until it had merged with
another firm, and also held a captain's rank in the National
Guard. He
was experienced in ship and ship-engine building, repairs and
alterations and had once earned $20,000 per year. He so much
desired
a job in his field in New York that he "would welcome" a $40 per week
($2080 per
year!) position in the Yard. Perhaps moved by sympathy or seeing
a bargain, the Yard's relief supervisor replied that a position similar
to what he was looking for was open and that he should see him about it
immediately. [Letter, Captain Doyle, to Mrs.
E.P. Huff (of Brooklyn), 2 February 1934; Letter, Tison, to Mr.
Hubert W. Eldred (of West New Brighton,
Staten Island), 12 May 1934; RG181; NA-NY.]
It was not surprising that organized labor
and its allies saw what they thought was some kind of scam going on in
the BNY as to the use of relief labor all the while civil service
employees were being let go, and in spring 1935 anger over such hiring
surfaced once again. The BNY received a letter from
Senator
Copeland of New York and another from Senator Moore of New Jersey,
mostly identical, forwarding on the expressed complaint of David
Kennedy, Secretary of Brooklyn Metal Trades
Council, that the Yard had furloughed or "rotated" civil service
employees
in the building trades shop and then brought in CWA people to perform
their
work. Further, since the civil service regulations categorized
Yard employees on indefinite
furlough without pay as "employees," they could not obtain Home Relief
or Work Relief they had to break their connection to the
BNY completely in order to get relief. The Home Relief
Organization at Works Divisions headquarters in New York then
responded by telling the Yard's Public Works Office--the home of the
trades shop--that City Relief Agencies should not deny relief to such
laid-off
Yarders and promised to
investigate the matter to
see if any qualified furloughed workers were being inappropriately
denied aid. But an official of the office also said
that such workers could still be denied relief
while on furlough for other reasons, such as
having a sufficient family income from other sources and that merely
being on the Yard's furlough rolls would not qualify one for
relief. The trades shop
committee however denied that any workers had been appropriately denied
relief. Notice should be taken here that the first and more
serious charge was not addressed. A short
time later, in replying to a New York Congressman about a similar
complaint from the electricians, the Commandant noted that the work
load was very low and that they had no choice but to cut all but the
most qualified workers, while waiting for and expectant rise in the
rolls come October. He explained that relief funding was
a separate appropriation and that the Yard had no control over the
hiring process. Electricians on indefinite furlough should apply
through relief channels for relief work. ["Home Relief," Memorandum for files, by
Lt. Cmdr. Angas, 3
April 1935; h/w attachment by Mr. Light, Chairman of Shop
Committee, PWD; Letter, Commandant
Stirling, Commandant, to Hon. Delaney, House
of Representatives, 28 June 1935; RG181; NA-NY.]
Still, as Congressman William
Brunner noted in a letter to the Navy Department, what were people to
think about the personnel situation in the Public Works Department
when it seemed clear, at least to him, that the BNY had let PWD workers
go in mid-1934 once it became clear that the CWA funding, begun in
January 1934, would become more or less permanent. His figures
showed the following employment numbers in the shop:
Trades
1/33
7/33 1/34 7/34
1/35 7/35
292 399
327 373
234 222
It was a matter never resolved to the civil servants' satisfaction.
[Letter,
Representative
Brunner, to Rear Admiral Lackey,
Navy Dept., DC, 31 July 1935; copy received in BNY 8/5/35; RG181:
NA-NY.]
The Great Depression had
brought some substantial changes as to how the
BNY interacted with its neighbors. Previously, since the
introduction
of the civil service, it had stood practically as a political island
within Brooklyn and the city on general, dealing with just the federal
agencies, departments and legislative bodies. Now, here it was,
fairly
intimately tied in with local politics, relying on state and borough
agencies to supply it with a vital part of its labor, its relief
workers operating within a different set of compensation and benefit
structures. And the relief work load was to increase. But
entering the latter part of the 1930s and early 1940s, relief workers
would be accompanied on the job by an ever-increasing number of
contract
laborers.
.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . .
[Note on sources: In mid-1935 all
these state and city programs were subsumed within the WPA. And
with this reorganization our intimate records of public-assistance work
in the BNY cease. The state and city relief-labor files are a
part of the Yard's archives in the New York National Archives regional
office [as of the year 2000].
But the BNY's WPA records are not.
At some time they were removed from the yard's archives and a search
for them at the regional- and national-archive level in both the naval
and WPA records proved unsuccessful, with some small exceptions.
For information, we are left with annual reports, summary memorandums
and such. Therefore, the latter part of the following section
will be more of a catalog than a narrative.]
Top
The WPA Years
and the Turn to Contract Labor
On 1 July
1935, the then-existing federal relief-work agencies
were consolidated into the Works
Progress Administration. It took
over authority for the relief projects in the BNY, continuing the work
of modernizing the shops and improving and repairing
buildings and the grounds. To maintain continuity the
organization kept the workers provided by the Works Division, however,
but initially allowing the relief rolls to fall significantly, to only
65, by the
end of July. But the force quickly grew after that, reflecting
the
power of the new agency. By mid-August the WPA force in the BNY
rose to 453 and by the second week of September it stood at 1782
men, allowing the Yard to make good on some of its plans,
now drawn up by WPA draftsmen. ["Weekly News
Letter, United
States Navy Yard, N.Y.," 25 June 1935; 6 August 1935; 16 September
1935; RG80; NA-DC. For a history of
the WPA program, see: Nick Taylor, American-made:
The
Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work,
2008.]
The great surge in shipbuilding that began in the
mid-1930s made overcoming the BNY's
obvious physical inadequacies an urgent matter. Launchways,
piers, and
drydocks were too short for the new warships and a whole host of new
construction buildings, storerooms, auxiliary services, and tools were
needed to service ship construction.
The Yard needed more storehouses on site; it lacked space to store
supplies and
materials and as a result had to make use of the naval Supply Depot in
southern
Brooklyn In July 1937 President
Roosevelt announced the navy was conducting a survey of its own yards
to
determine the possibility of expanding them. The report even hinted
that the
navy might pick up some of the slack of the Maritime Commission by
building commercial ships in some of its navy yards. The BNY was
explicitly excluded from this latter idea as being already too busy and
congested. [NYT,
14 July 1937; also, see note immediately below.]
Looking at his hemmed-in
space in 1938 the Commandant regretted the Navy's decision in 1890 to
sell the
eastern
shoreline of Wallabout
Bay to
Brooklyn and began looking at other neighboring land for
expanding the BNY. It was felt impractical to reclaim the
Wallabout property, now a farmers' market, and as expanding the Yard
south across Flushing Street took it too far inland, Yard staff proposed that the navy take an area to its west, a
triangle bounded by Nassau, Gold, and John Streets, labeling it a
"semi-blighted urban property." (It did not get this particular piece of land.)
Proposed plans for the land included a new structural assembly shop,
which would
give a roof to reassembled work now being done outside near the
shipways. The two building ways, One and Two, sitting in front of
those city blocks, capable of handling
680-foot
ships
each needed space for extension: an immediate lengthening being
imperative for
number One in order to accommodate the
730-foot-long North Carolina.
The Yard proposed extending number Two out far enough to support a
800-foot ship, or even one
of 860 feet, which would be as far as the ways could be
extended
in the existing space without a significant re-landscaping of the bay
and
grounds. ["Third Naval District - Shore Station
Development
Program, Annual Revision 1939," from Commandant, Third Naval District,
to Commandant, Navy Yard, New York, NY [et al.], 16 December 1938;
RG181; NA-NY.]
Congress continued to allocate funds for many development projects in
the BNY and relief labor remained a mainstay for the expansion
work.
In June 1938, as part of the funding for a new turret construction
shop in the Yard, Congress authorized
$500,000 for WPA labor and $250,000 for PWA workers for its
construction. On another project, improving the electrical lines and for the
major reconstruction of shipways Two, money
was near-equally split between the two groups of workers. By
April 1939 some 2400
WPA workers, the largest number to date, began work on lengthening
the two building ways, as well as drydock
4 so that it could service 35,000-ton battleships such as the North Carolina. [Letter,
Chief, BuDocks, to Commandant, NYNY; 11 June 1938; Confidential files,
1918-44; NA-NY.]
In
the summer of 1939, with shipbuilding under the
Second Vinson Act fully underway and war in
Europe seemingly imminent, Congress decided that
the country's navy yards needed to expand more rapidly, and in the
funding
package for fiscal year 1940 it authorized that
growth on an emergency
basis. To perform this work the Navy Department now turned to
private
business on a scale it had not used before. In August, the Bureau
of Yards and Docks
told its shore establishments that it "is desired, wherever practicable
without detriment to the best interests of the service, to avoid
increasing the Yard labor forces engaged on public works
construction. To this end, efforts should be made to perform as
much of the new work by contract as is practicable." Department
officials believed that the yards had hired on way too much day-labor
and ordered that some of them be replaced by workers from outside
businesses where the work may be "susceptible of performance by
contract". One of the memo's reader at the BNY scribbled that he
did not think
the order particularly aimed at them. But the memo did establish
the grounds for
extensive use of contracted labor in building up the BNY over the next
few years. Within
a month the Commandant listed several projects, including the
Hammerhead Crane, whose completion could be hastened by permitting
contractors to move to shift work. [SecNav, Annual Report for FY 1940,
FY 1941; Letter, Chief of
BuY&D, to [various establishments]; 7 August
1939; Letter, Commandant, to Chief BuY&D, 7 September 1939; RG 181;
NA-NY.]
1939:
In April 1939, contractors began
driving piling onto what was now a peninsula
jutting into
Wallabout Bay in order to support a crane capable
of lifting 350 tons, to be used to install
turrets, guns, and other equipment on the heaviest of ships as they
were being finished at the dock beside it [the soon-to-be-iconic Hammerhead Crane].
- That same spring, Congress authorized the purchase of
the "triangle" just south of
the waterfront Con Ed
plant, for the building of a turret and erection shop, and demolition began in
September
1939. In
July 1940 the
Bureau of Yards and Docks awarded the Turner Construction the contract for
constructing a concrete warehouse of fifteen stories; the first eleven
for desperately needed storage, and topped off with a four-story office
complex. It was placed next to a
similar building built by the
company in 1917. As a
result of recent federal defense legislation, the project
was contracted out on a cost-plus-fixed-fee schedule, now believed to
be a quicker
means of awarding
construction contracts than the older method of awarding through
competitive
bidding. [This method allowed the Navy to award a contract to
whom it pleased and felt was capable of performing the project,
based on a best-guess budget, and make up any shortfall later.]
-
Shortly
thereafter, the
Department gave a $1.52 million
contract to the Walter Kidde Contractors on the same basis to put up a sub-assembly shop, shop
building improvements, and steel storage runways.
- In October, various local companies
received contracts for such tasks as constructing retaining walls,
and demolition in the neighborhood. In November the Navy awarded
contracts for the foundations and floors of the turret and
erection shops and for improving Berths 11 and 12.
[NYT,
2 April 1939; 18 October 1939, 16 July
1940, 24 July 1940; Brooklyn
Eagle, 10 November 1939; NYT,
11 November 1939; 23 November 1939; 16 July 1940; 17 July 1940; 24 July
1940.]
1940: Work
proceeded feverishly. By August 1940 a new
Structural Shop, the Hammerhead Crane, the reconstruction of Building
Ways 2, and an extension of drydock 4 had all been completed.
- Many other projects
were in progress: the turret
and erection shop; an extension of the crane runways over the building
ways; improvements to Pier G and Berths 11, 12, and to the Power
Plant.
- Also: the the storehouse;
the modernization of building ways 1; a host of improvements
to various shop
buildings, subassembly shops and facilities; plus the installation of a
power connection to the city electrical network.
- The Navy awarded the major part of this work through
cost-plus-fee contracts, at an estimated cost of $8.2 million, although
it still relied on competitive lump-sum contracts for some of the
projects. This was in addition to the Yard's continuing reliance
on federal WPA and city WPA workers, as well
as its own Public Works trades shop.
- The Commandant had a lengthy wish
list The Yard needed a new sheet metal shop, improved
elevators and toilet facilities; it lacked appropriate
weight-handling
equipment, enough rolling stock, and replacing the pumping equipment in
the
four drydocks had become a priority. And above all, the BNY
had to overcome the extreme congestion that plagued it; the navy yard
needed more room. [Memorandum to Manager, 14
August 1940; RG181; NA-NY.]
1941: In
July 1941 the
Public Works Office drew up a report of the BNY's substantial
renovations since
1935. Various old buildings had been torn down
and
replaced. Work on extending Ways 2 began in 1938
with WPA forces, and further modifications had been made in the summer
of
1940; the Iowa (the heaviest
ship the Yard had built to date) was now going
up on it.
- After the launch of the North
Carolina in June 1940 work began on
extending Ways 1 and it had proceeded enough enough to allow for the
keel of the
Missouri to be laid in January
1941. For both ways workers had extended their overhead
cranes 100 feet seaward and 200 feet inland.
- The 800 foot by 110 foot high turret and erection shop, just west of
the ways, reached completion in March.
- A crane runway 600 feet in length, 50 feet high, and 152
wide, to move sub-assemblies, was finished in May 1940. New and
bigger paint and boat shops had been built as well as a larger flag and
sail loft.
- Large additions had been made to the boiler and
machine shops; improvements made to berths and piers; portable boilers
constructed on two piers to
provide steam power for building and repair work.
- An outside
connection to Brooklyn Edison was established as a fallback
measure while power plant reconstruction was under way. The power
plant
had its generator power tripled and extra air compressors added.
- Contracts had been let for building two new drydocks
along with a subassembly plant of about 800'x100'. It was planned
that the docks would be far enough along in late 1942 that work could
start on the two remaining battleships then.
- Two buildings, to hold fabricating work, with large welding
platforms,
went up by the ways.
- A new receiving barracks to replace
the
ship SEATTLE was built on the south side of Flushing Avenue and new
larger washroom facilities, capable of handling 6000 people were added
to the shipfitter shops.
- A new foundry was planned for the old Wallabout area; plans drawn for
a new Material
Laboratory, plus assorted new cranes and train equipment bought.
- The 16-story
storage/office
building topped out in early September 1941, a month ahead of schedule,
floors
being added at the rate of one every 3 days. In just 48 working
days the
Yard thus acquired twenty-one
new acres of floor space, and, according to the Yard at a minimal cost
in occupational injuries, the company losing 125 man-days out of
130,000 worked. The Yard planned to open the storage areas by 1
November and the offices by 1 December.
- Special note: Starting in July 1941 the
Navy required contractors to adhere to the government's
non-discrimination clause as
per Roosevelt's executive order #8802, requiring that contractors "not
discriminate against any worker because of race, creed, color, or
national origin." ;
[Report of "Organization of a
Navy Yard" from
1935;
also, draft report "The Yard Today," information supplied by the Public
Works Officer, 7 August 1941; Bureau of Docks, "Annual Report,
1941"; Circular
letter, Chief of BuDocks, to Commandant, 5 July 194; RG181;
NA-NY; NYT,
2 September 1941; BE, 2
September
1941.]
Top
Two New
Drydocks for the BNY
As noted above, in seeking room for
expansion the
BNY had initially looked at the city blocks to its west.
Representative John
Delaney, in introducing the bill in January 1940, while acknowledging
that the
Yard's renovation would require
considerable neighborhood demolition, defended his
proposal saying that since the BNY was well known for being the "best
equipped in
offices, men and facilities in the United States," the expansion
program would actually improve the neighborhood, as well as
dovetail with the schemes of the City Planning Commission. In May
1940 the Commandant renewed his complaint that the
all the new work the Yard had taken on since since the declaration of
the emergency had severely been hampered by a lack of space. He
now added the new charge that in addition to the industrial land
shortage the Yard lacked housing for all the new naval personnel
moving
through the base. New space was essential and he seconded
the Congressman's desire to acquire the plot of land immediately to the
Yard's west. [NYT,
15
January 1940; Letter, Commandant, to Secretary of the Navy, 16 May
1940; RG181; NA-NY.]
Complications arose when the Navy and
Maritime
Commission let it be known that same month that they were scouting for
sites capable
of handling ships of 45,000 tons
or more south of the Brooklyn
and Manhattan bridges, resurrecting an old fear that a bombing
raid or warship barrage against
the spans would block the BNY from the sea. To further reinforce
their argument the agencies wanted a drydock capable of converting
commercial liners
to troop and supply carriers, and the largest such ships then afloat,
like the Queen Elizabeth, were too tall to pass under the
Brooklyn Bridge. When Bayonne got the nod it set off a flurry of
political panic and maneuvering. Local Brooklyn interests agitated
for the new drydock throughout the summer. The editors of the Brooklyn Eagle
felt "distressed"
when word came out of the Naval Affairs Committee that it was arguing
over whether the
government alone or in conjunction with the Port
Authority should run the new facility. Needless to say, the
political and
commercial interests backing Bayonne kept their
lobbying at an intense level. [BE,
editorial, 27 May 1940, 10 July
1940, 11 July 1940, editorial; BE, 19 August 1940,
edit., 22
August, 1940, 23 August, 1940, 26 August 1940, edit., 27 August;.]
By the end of August Brooklyn's claim to
the new drydock seemed assured when the Navy withdrew its plans to
share the drydock with any other agency. The
House Naval Affairs Committee signed off on an authorization bill for
the
drydock and shortly thereafter Congress sent the bill to the White
House for final approval. But in mid-September a "bombshell"
dropped on the New York interests when
New Jersey Senator William Barbour made the surprise announcement that
Bayonne
had won the new
facility after all. The Governor of New Jersey made
the official announcement on 1 January 1941. The Navy decided to
run the drydock as an adjunct of the
BNY and in March 1941 took possession of the site and
began demolition procedures. [NYT, 29 August 1940; BE,
7 September 1940, 8, edit., 8 September 1940, 13 September 1940, 17
September 1940, 10, edit., 20 September 1940, 27
January 1941, 28 February 1941, 11 March 1941.]
Looking back to the previously-desired
expansion space to the
west of the BNY its staff now considered it inadequate in size and its
condemnation to be too lenghty a political process, and so the Yard
took a second look at the eastern shore of Wallabout Bay, to land it
had sold to the city of Brooklyn fifty years earlier and which now
housed the Wallabout Market.
Municipally-owned, this space
appeared easier to acquire. Here was plenty of room for two
shipbuilding drydocks as well as accessory construction
facilities. In particular, the Bureau of Ships,
now committed to constructing warships in drydock instead of on the
ways, wanted two new drydocks capable of holding the battleships 69 and
70, designed at a proposed
55,000+ tons, the largest ever to date; none of the Yard's
four present drydocks could accommodate ships larger than 35,000
tons. [Memo, Public Works Officer, to Technical
Officer, 19 October
1940; Letter, Bureau of Ships, to Secretary of the
Navy, 25 October 1940; Letter, Bureau
of Ships, to Secretary of the
Navy [and endorsements from Yard and Docks and CNO], 25 October 1940;
RG181; NA-NY.]
Negotiations between the Navy and the city proceeded
quickly, and in January 1941
the BNY announced the pending acquisition
of the Wallabout Market, which supported some
three-hundred vendors who bought from hundreds of farmers daily, and
also served as a bay terminal for several railroads. On
14 June Mayor LaGuardia led the
whole pack of merchants out of the Market in a motorcade to a new site
in Canarsie
and the Navy moved in to demolish the area. The showpiece of
the land
would be the two huge construction
drydocks, each initially slated to house one of the new
"super"
battleships. Part
of the bay between the Yard and the islet was to be filled in, and in
addition to the drydocks the Yard added a
sheetmetal shop,
a utility
shop, its new foundry [previously set to go up on the site of the old
one, necessitating the partialling out of its work during its
construction],
as well as a
railroad
receiving yard, material
lab, public works shop, welding and fabrication shop, sub-assembly
shop, and paint, lumber, oil storage facilities. By
early April the
Navy let
the contract for the drydocks' construction and in June took over the
site. Another
piece of land
next to the Naval Hospital was taken late in summer 1941 to round out
the property. (Construction of the two drydocks took until early
1943.) [NYT, 30
January; 1 February 1941, 4 February; BE,
3 February 1941; NYT, 21
March 1941, 2 April 1941, 4 April 1941, 5 April 1941, 15 June
1941;
BE, 1 April 1941, 4 April 1941,15 June
1941, 21 June 1941; Letter,
Commandant, to A.G. Bruce, District Engineer, District No. 9,
Public Roads Admin., Federal Works Agency, Albany, 11 August 1941;
RG181; NA-NY.]
Labor Agitation Among Contract Workers
As has been well-documented, the decade leading up to U.S. entry
into the war was one of the great eras of American labor agitation,
and the federal government in its role as management was far from
immune to worker protests, the Brooklyn Navy
Yard included. In shipyards both the IUMSWA and AFL agitated
where they and fought each other ruthlessly. The trade unions and their
constituent locals that represented federal workers or those working on
federal contracts constantly quarreled among themselves, often
striking over
jurisdictional disputes. Now, at the beginning of a decade with a
war on in Europe, such
actions pushed the government into formal
negotiations with the
American Federation of Labor. On 22 July 1941, Sidney
Hillman, head of the Office of Management Production, leading
a consortium of
government agencies involved in defense construction which included the
Navy's Bureau of Yards and Docks, reached an agreement with the
Federation's Building Trades Council. John Coyne,
president of the BTC, passed it on to the presidents of their
affiliated unions and to the regional councils, such as New York's,
which in turn gave it to the metropolitan locals. Full
cooperation was asked of all parties. On projects using just one
shift the agreement set eight
hours as the working day, not
counting lunch, with work
over eight hours or on weekends and
holidays qualifying for an overtime rate of 1.5. On sites
employing
more than one shift, the agreement dropped the work day down to 7.5
hours at eight hours
pay, the straight-time work week being defined as lasting from midnight
Sunday to
midnight Friday; and,
where practicable the shifts were to be rotated. The
agreement pegged minimums to local
prevailing rates and confirmed those rates for a year or until a
project ended, if
shorter. In
return,
unions and councils agreed not to strike, especially over
jurisdictional
disputes, and that they would submit grievances and other disputes to
an
arbitration board
composed of representatives from the various concerned government
agencies, the BCTD, and an OPM representative. [Lead
Letter, from Frank Knox, to All
Bureaus and Offices, Navy Dept.; includes copy of agreement; 30 July
1941; RG 181; NA-NY.]
The agreement came too late to prevent contract union electricians working in the BNY from
joining a city-wide sympathy strike called on 29 July 1941 by Local 3 of the IBEW [International
Brotherhood
of Electrical Workers]. The electricians' union called on its members to
support a strike by one of its bargaining units against Con Edison for
its hiring of non-union help. This soon became the largest
electrical strike in New York in a generation and
involved mass picketing which appeared to be completely effective in
tying
up private work throughout the city. Workers from a thousand sites,
including a reported
286 electricians working for contractors in the Yard, turned out making
it difficult if not impossible for the other 1400 other contract
tradesmen
in the Yard to continue their work. (Electricians operated
hoists on projects for instance, and in general, most construction
projects required a complex interaction between all trades, meaning if
one trade put down its tools they all had to stop.)
Pickets
sprang up at noon at the BNY's gates and picketing continued the next
day, halting work on the new eleven-story storehouse/office building,
the two
1100-foot drydocks, and other construction projects. Apparently
some
50 Yard electricians initially honored the picket line, for the New
York Times
reported that the Local ordered them (who as Yard workers had their own
affiliated local) back to work immediately on the
day
the strike started. Commandant Marquart said the
situation in the Yard was serious and appealed to the strikers that for
the national interest they return to work.
Sidney
Hillman,
co-director of the OPM,
quickly
stepped in to meet with the local's executive committee. Part of
his work was cut out for him as the local encountered public hostility
over
the work stoppages inside the BNY, and on the 31st, President Harry Van
Arsdale said that in the interest of
patriotism
the union would order its members then at the BNY back to work while
continuing
the strike everywhere else. But public pressure against any
strike
at this time was intense and on 9 August the union called off the
strike,
to wait on a decision by the National Defense Mediation Board, which in
September ruled against Local 3. [NYT,
30 July
1941; 31 July 1941; BE, 29 July 1941; 30 July 1941. On the
hostility
of the Eagle to electricians striking Yard projects, see the
editorial
on 31 July 1941, and the editorial cartoon of a drawing of navy yard
strikers
titled "Good News for Hitler," BE, 1 August 1941. On the recall
of Yard strikers, see: NYT, 1 August 1941. After the start of
the
war in Europe, as a token of its desire to cooperate in national
defense
program, Local 3 of IBEW offered to help overcome the shortage of
skilled
mechanics at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In a letter to Captain Charles
Dunn,
Van Ardsdale said he was prepared to take the responsibility of
supplying
all the trained electricians that the expansion program would require. NYT,
25 May 1940. On the strike's end, see: Warren Moscow, "History of Local
Union 3," ms., Joint Industry Board of the Electrical Industry
Archives,
Queens, NY, n.d.]
Most locals doing contract work at the BNY complied
with the AFL's agreement with the federal government; a
few did not. In September 1941 a BNY BuDocks officer informed his
Washington superior that of 31 trades working on seven contract
projects all
but five were honoring the agreement. The electricians in
particular, did not want to give up the six-hour day which was then
their norm. Their
leaders said the local would supply as many electricians as the Yard
needed but only for
the shorter shift, with OT to be paid on weekends and holidays. The
officer calculated that such an arrangement
was cost-neutral compared to the Agreement's terms, except as to
what base the OT would be paid on, the six- or eight-hour day.
Some of the other holdouts wanted double overtime, and as the
government would not make up the difference in the pay the affected
contractors refused to schedule any overtime. So, only about
three-quarters
of the union trades-workers worked an eight-hour day. [There was no follow-up memo in the files. Memo,
Officer-in-Charge
of Fee Contracts, to Chief, BuDocks, 20 September 1941; RG181; NA-NY.]
Despite the agreement, a
jurisdictional
dispute arose near the end of October between the Painters and Masons
over the application of
water-proof cement paint to the outside walls of the storehouse/office
building being built by Turner Construction, and some sixty painters
walked off the job when the contractor
gave the task to the masons. The Commandant called
the walkout a violation of the July agreement. The Painter's
local
president countered that such
a memorandum agreed to by a union's leadership did not automatically
bind its locals to it and that each
construction local needed to ratify the
agreement for itself. The dispute dragged on for over
a week, but
the two unions finally did agree to arbitration, and the Painters'
president
ordered his men back to work on 7 November, by which time the masons
had
almost finished applying the cement paint. [BE,
1
November
1941; NYT, 1 November 1941; 2 November 1941; 7 November 1941; 8
November 1941. "Building Trades Agreement for Defense Construction,"
Letter,
from the Secretary of the Navy, to All Bureaus and Offices [et al.], 30
July 1941; RG 19, NA-MD. Transcripts, telephone conversations, Captain
Smith, New York, to Captain Dunlap, Bureau of Docks, stating that
masons
were almost finished with the work, 6 November 1941, and Captain Smith,
to Mr. Friedman, Painters, 7 November 1941, stating that the painters
resumed
work that day. Both in RG181; NA-NY.]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
.
With the acquisition and
reconstruction of
much of the eastern half of Wallabout Bay in the years leading up to
U.S. entry into World War II,
the Brooklyn Navy Yard grew half again as large as it was in
1930.
Most of this expansion as well as
renovation of the older plant was accomplished with outside
labor. A Yard report from October
1941 lists 4600
non-civil-service people working in
the BNY: 3600 for
contractors
and 1000 for the WPA, the latter remaining a steadfast part of Yard labor
until the program was phased out early in the war.
As to contract construction, alternative financing to lump-sum
contracts continued as a primary means of awarding new projects to
private businesses. The
Bureau of Docks' annual report for 1941 noted 28 lump-sum contract
awarded
during the year, while ten fixed-fee contracts were given out, where
none were in effect at the start of the year. While the Yard's
expansion was still unfinished as of December 1941, it was well
underway. [Budocks,
Annual Report, FY 1941;
RG181; NA-NY; MS,
n.a.,
"Brooklyn Navy Yard," 23 October 1941; RG181; NA-NY.] [For maps
of the BNY before and after the reconstruction, which occurred after
the
US entered WWII, see http://www.columbia.edu/~jrs9/BNY-maps.html.]
Top
Bibliography
United States.
Works Progress Administration. New York (N.Y.). General Statistical Bulletin.
Apr. 1938 on.
United States.
Work Projects Administration. Employment on projects in March
1936, WPA including NYA. Washington, 1936.
Adams, Grace
Kinckle, Workers on Relief.
New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1939;
Howard, Donald
S. The
WPA and Federal Relief Policy. New York: Russell Sage
Foundation, 1943.
United States.
Work Projects Administration (New York, N.Y.). The Employment
Program <microform>. 1939.
Schwartz,
Bonnie Fox.
The Civil Works
Administration, 1933-34: The
Business of Emergency Employment in the New Deal. Ph.D. diss.,
Columbia U., 1978.
Taylor,
Nick. American-made: The
Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work.
New York: Bantam Books, 2008.
John R Stobo ©
March 2010