Edward Nash Hurley to Woodrow Wilson

Secretary Baker has told me that you expect to call him, Secretary Daniels and myself into a conference with you some time this week. As I understand the conference will relate to some conflicting calls upon the Shipping Board by the Food Administration, the War Industries Board, and the War Department, I thought that it might be well to have before you the situation as viewed by the Shipping Board. In writing you so frankly, my whole thought is to obtain your helpful suggestions.

I know that I am merely expressing your own views when I say that our primary duty is to see to it that the war against the German government is won. So far as our direct participation in the conflict is concerned, the task with which we are confronted is the most stupendous ever imposed upon a nation in war. No nation has ever had to maintain a line of communication 6,000 miles long. Certainly no nation has ever been compelled to maintain it in the face of submarine depredations.

If there were no conflicting considerations, I would like to see America send five million men to France. There are so many things to be considered, so many interests involved, that we must consider not what we would like to do, but what we can do to make the war against the German government effective. All the available tonnage of the world's merchant marine has been estimated at little over 30,000,000 tons. This includes the Pacific as well as the Atlantic, tramps as well as liners. It includes the tonnage of all the neutrals, and all the belligerents, South American as well as Oriental.

The submarines have been sinking approximately 600,000 deadweight tons a month, up to October 1, 1917. We have enormously enlarged our shipbuilding capacity. Our efforts already have trebled the productive capacity of the country in 1916. We must produce 6,000,000 tons of ships in 1918. The tremendous obstacles we must overcome in order to achieve this goal are shown in the simple statement that more than eighty per cent of the contracts of the Emergency Fleet Corporation must be produced in new yards, some of which are only now under construction. Most of the space in the old established yards has been taken by the Navy Department.

The trustees of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, realizing that all red tape must be cut to accomplish the tremendous task which confronts us, has been enlarging and perfecting the organization of the corporation. We are drawing into the organization the best organizing skill and the best engineering skill that the country provides. Enormous obstacles must be overcome if we are to maintain our own line of communication and the lines of communications of our associates in the war. Regardless of the speed with which we are able to turn our new ships, we must conserve every ship that is now available, or that will be available. We must make decisions as to what services we will perform. As Mr. Baruch says, we have taken more ships out of the nitrate trade than can be spared.

We should be adding ships to this trade, instead of taking them away. We must do this if we are to continue furnishing munitions to our own army and navy and to the Allies. The same is true of the food supply. There are many products which we must bring to the United States from distant ports if we are to continue our exports for the relief of the Allies.

We must continue to bring crude oil from Mexico, or we cannot continue to produce in the United States the fuel oil and gasoline needed for our own army and navy and for export to the Allies. It is no longer a question of considering private interests. All such interests must be subordinated to the success of the war. The Allies, as well as the United States, must discontinue the shipping engaged in non-essential trade.

The main problem that confronts us right now is one of coordination and selection. The departments of the government requiring ships to perform their services must consider the war problem as a whole, and not as it affects each department. The direct needs of the War Department to transport and supply the American army in France must be balanced against the indirect, but equally essential needs of other departments. If, for instance, a ship is taken from the transportation of manganese ore, and transferred to the service of the War Department to carry supplies to our army in France, it may mean that the manufacture of steel plates will be delayed. It might mean a delay of three or four months in completing several ships near completion.

The responsibilities of the United States virtually constitute an endless chain. We are bound soon to reach the point where we must decide whether to use a ship for our own need or some imperative need of the Allies. The British, the French, the Italians, and all other nations associated with us are constantly urging us to release ships to them. We must constantly balance their needs against our own, lest in refusing them and letting their line weaken, we increase our own responsibilities and the length of the war. We must look into the future and do our part in guarding against a repetition of the Italian retreat a retreat which might be duplicated on the French front if there were any failure of supplies from the United States.

There has been complete harmony and cooperation between the War and Navy Departments, the War Industries Board, Food Administration and the Shipping Board. All of us have been engrossed in our own responsibilities and while we have constantly conferred on separate phases of war work, some method or machinery might be adopted for coordination of the whole problem, and the balancing of one need against another. If we decide as a result of such common council just what we can do, without sacrificing any link in the chain of war efficiency, we can rely with greater certainty upon our ultimate success in the war.

The President,
The White House.

ENH/RHB.