Congress was asked to appropriate $350,000,000 more for destroyers, to build new plants required, as well as for ship construction. When the bill was passed, October 6, 1917, the plans were ready, contracts were signed, and the enlarged program was under way. Ground was broken at Squantum the next day, October 7. Thousands of laborers were at work, dredging, draining, making roads, driving piles, erecting buildings, transforming that marsh into a fit habitation and working-place for 10,000 men. Buildings sprang up like magic. One concrete, steel and glass structure three stories high and 200 feet long was finished in two weeks. When winter came on, the laborers had to use picks and shovels to dig through the frozen clay to lay foundations, and all the workmen were handicapped by the bitter cold. Concrete poured hot--and thousands of tons were used--had to be protected by masses of hay and sheets of canvas, with heated air circulating inside to keep it from freezing. But the work never halted, and in spite of all handicaps, was completed in record time. There were eighteen acres of shipyards covered by one continuous roof; the arrangements being so complete that raw material went in at one end and destroyers slid out at the other. There were hundreds of buildings, not a few of them covering one to three acres. There were enough ways for ten destroyers, and a score could have been under construction at the same time. Six months after ground was broken I had the privilege of witnessing there the laying of the keels of five destroyers in one day. The building of Squantum was rivaled by the erection of the big plants at Erie, Pa., to make forgings for destroyer shafts and turbines; the plant at Buffalo and by other feats of construction that would be difficult to excel. All were erected and in operation in half the time they could have been completed under ordinary conditions. Our construction program embraced practically a thousand vessels--275 destroyers, 447 submarine-chasers, 99 submarines, 100 eagle boats, 54 mine-sweepers, and a number of gunboats and ships of other types. All these in addition to the capital ships and scout cruisers authorized in the three-year program. Though some contracts were cancelled after the armistice, all but 100 or so of these vessels were built, nearly 500 completed before the end of hostilities. In addition 1,597 privately-owned vessels, ranging from small patrol craft to huge transports, were converted by the Navy for war purposes. Over 2,000 vessels were in naval service before hostilities ended--six times as many as were on the Navy list when war was declared. How was it possible, in a country where shipbuilding had declined until it was "a craft and not a trade," to build and alter and repair all these ships, and also to provide munitions and build great establishments ashore on both sides of the sea?