Show THE RECORD OF ROACH Sonic Facts and Figures for His Admiring Ad-miring Friends The apologists of Robeson and Roach have made so many excuses for those worthies and by concealment and false pretense have so obscured their real culpability cul-pability that the letter from Washington published in the Herald of Sunday will be of great service in refreshing the minds of the people concerning the greatest crime committed against them in twenty years Briefly put the business of Roach and other shipbuilders in whose enterprises enter-prises he was a silent partner was to secure se-cure a contract forrebuilding or repairing some vessel and then accept in part payment pay-ment a lot of other vessels on which hallowed h-allowed the Government 131 cents per pound for the iron which they contained When it is remembered that these contracts con-tracts were let without advertising or bids and that the vessels to be broken up were turned over to him without being subjected to a survey offered for sale at auction it becomes very clear that the aim of the ring was something else than the construction of an effective navy The five great Robeson monitors which are now on the stocks and which it is estimated cannot be finished for less than 0000000 represent the destruction of nineteen war ships which cost 15 000000 and a cash expenditure of about 7000000 If they are ever completed they will have cost the government 28 000000 and will be without exception the five costliest menofwar in the world As to their value opinions differ but every one agrees that they will be prac tically useless for seagoing purposes and that much more effective ships might be I built for one quarter of the money In fact they will be when finished just about such vessels as the government gave Roach and his friends to break up By pursuing this policy for ten or twelve years longer there would not be an American war vessel afloat and Roach would have perhaps a dozen ungainly monsters in his various yards represent ing the great achievement of putting ten ships into one One of the first acts of the Secretary of the Navy Thompson in 1877 was to retire Constructor Hanscomb from his place He was Robesons most efficient lieutenant lieuten-ant and whatever his superior failed or lacked to do he was ready to take in hand at once The mere fact that the eleven vessels given outright to Roach to be broken up and used in the reconstruc tion of the Miantonomah and Pur itan cost 8230000 and realized to the government when sold for the scrap iron that they contained only 297000 shows how scoundrelly was the bargain that the greatest American shipbuilder drove with the perfidious representatives of the people Probably nothing in the history of corruption and malfeasance from the earliest days of human government to the present equals this transaction in point of downright scoundrelism These disclosures reveal the fact that the socalled expenditures for repairs resulting in even poorer ships than were originally given into the hands of the builders do not cover the entire field of naval mismanagement and crookedness Besides the enormous cash outlays re sulting in nothing of value scores of reasonably good timber and iron ships were literally given away as junk This is why after an expenditure of millions dollars since the war the country has no firstclass war ships and only a very few war ships of any kind whereas twenty years ago we had enough to blockade the sea coast from the Chesapeake to the Rio Grande Chicago Herald |