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Show OUR NAVAL WASTE. An article from the February Mc-Clure's Mc-Clure's on "Our Navy on the Land," is loaded with facts. Here are a couple of paragraphs: "We have twenty navy yards not counting other naval stations apportioned appor-tioned betwoen ten states, quite equally equal-ly divided along 5,000 miles of sea-coast sea-coast from Portsmouth, N. H., to Puget Sound, Wash. Five of them including tho be6t plant of all haven't the principal thing a navy yard is built for that is, a drydock big enough to hold the battleships we aro now contemplating. Two of them have one flno dock apiece, which no battleship battle-ship can reach at'any tide, and three of them one costly dock apiece, cut from the sea by shoal water, which battleships can only cross at certain times in the tide, and which, if they wore waterlogged in time of war, they could not cross at all. "If war should break out tomorrow there would not bo one place In the United Statos where a fleet of modern Bhlps could be repaired after a naval battle. The fortunes of a great war might depend on this fact." This 16 a severe indictment, but only a part of the case. Yards aro built at a cost of millions of dollars, which do not do a thousand dollars' worth of work per year. Yards are located lo-cated In out-of-the-way places. Machine Ma-chine shops in those yards are so managed man-aged as to cost from two to five times what they would under private control. con-trol. All told, Mr. Turner, the writer of the article in question, estimates that at least $40,000,000 is annually wasted in the upkeep of our navy, which Is one-third of the total appropriation. |