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Show SHIP BUILDING BEGUN. Contract Let for Eight of Thousand Ships to be Built. Washington. Signing of the first contract for ship construction under (he administration's billion dollar building build-ing program was announced Sunday by the federal shipping board. The contract went to the Los Angeles Shipbuilding & Dry Dock company, and called for delivery in 1918 of eight steel vessels, each to carry 8S0O tons of cargo. The shipping board plans to have built within the nest eighteen months at least 1000 ships, steel and wood, o! more than 3,000,000 aggregate tonnage, to combat the German submarine campaign. cam-paign. Bills to be introduced in congress con-gress this week call for an initial appropriation ap-propriation of $400,000,000. |