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Show SETS SHIP ' 'HITS REM FBR MR H Great Chain Rapidly Approaching Ap-proaching Completion, With 118 Fully Pre- pared for Duty. WASHINGTON, July 27 America's great chain of ship manufactories is gpproaching completion. There are. now 118 fully equipped yards in the United States and forty-four forty-four others partly complete, of which twenty-three are more than 75 per cent finished and only six less than 25 per cent rady to begin building tonnage. 'j have been built from tue ground fi'Pi wn''e "3e others have been extend-cd extend-cd and enlarged to such a degree that many of them amount almost to new yards. Back of tho weekly outputs of tonnage ton-nage has bt:en a long stretch of work, R".aieiiDs discouraging, always nec-?ary, nec-?ary, which only just now is nearing completion. Thirty-seven steel yards which the United "States had when war began have grown to st-vonty-two. The old yards nave been increased from 162 ways to 195 and more are being added. Eighty yards for building wooden ships now are in operation or nearing completion. The remainder of the total number of yards are for building concrete ships, a new industry developed by the war need. llog Island, the greatest of all shipyards ship-yards and one of the four government fabricating yards, is 90 per cent complete com-plete and will launch its first ship next month, Mrs. Vv'oodrow Wilson acting as sponsor. Bristol and Newark, two other fabricating yards, are almost complete, while Wilmington, N. C, the fourth, was commenced only in May and still is in its infancy. Wherever expansion can be made efficiently, effi-ciently, the shipping board is lending its aid to increase the capacity of ex' isting yards. Within the month eighteen eight-een news ways have been ordered added add-ed to the country's ship manufactories as Chairman Hurley prefers to call them, for America is" getting ready to "manufacture" ships instead of biiild-ing biiild-ing them. The Alameda plant oi the Bethlehem Shipbuilding corporation has been authorized to add ten new ways at an estimated cost of $20,000,000. The some company's yard at Sparrow's Point, Md., is adding three additional ways at a cost of $3,000,000. The New York Shipbuilding corporation at Camden, Cam-den, N. ,T., is building live new ways at a cost of $7,000,000. The 118 yards which are complete are distributed sectionally as follows: Pacific coast. forty-eight; Atlantic coast, thirty-three; Great Lakes, six-' six-' teen, and gulf coast, sixteen. |