Carnegie Co.’s Profit, $700,000 ADMIRAL MASON SAYS OREGON NOW CARRIES 400 TONS Indiana, Massachusetts, New York and Others Also Have Defective Plates FACTS HIDDEN 15 YEARS Revelations in Upton Sinclair’s New Novel Are Fully Verified Washington, Sept. 5—Rear-Admiral W. P. Mason, Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance, in an interview today admitted that the battleship Oregon, once the pride of the United States Navy, has carried since the day she was built 400 tons of defective armor plate. In addition the naval authorities reluctantly told that the conning tower of the Oregon, which by expert testimony nearly fifteen years ago was shown to be full of blowholes, is still on this vessel, which may any day be called in defending the country against an enemy. It is also known that the armor manufactured by the Carnegie Steel Company, Limited, up to the latter part of 1893, which Hilary A. Herbert, then Secretary of the Navy, recommended be stripped from the Indiana, New York, Massachusetts and several other smaller vessels has never been removed. The investigation made by the “American” was prompted by the assertion in Upton Sinclair’s new book “The Money-changers,” that “there are ships in our navy covered with rotten armor plate that was sold to the Government for four or five times what it cost.” Referring to the investigation in 1893–94, which resulted in the celebrated armor plate scandal, the author says: “Nothing much was ever done about it. The Government could not afford to let the real facts get out. But, of course, the insiders in the navy knew about it, and the memory will last as long as the ships last.” This part of the book is a bitter attack on several well-known men who have been connected for years with the steel industry, and whose identity it is easy to trace. It charges that at the time of the armor plate scandal they bought out the Democratic party and secured the support of a President of the United States. And here is part of a second dispatch, which appeared in the “New York World” the following day. It is amusing to note how these two rivals, the “World” and the “American,” follow each other up! Lake Placid, N. Y., Sept. 6—In an interview given by him today, after he had been informed by his publishers and a representative of the “World” of a report from Pittsburgh that William E. Corey, President of the U. S. Steel Corporation, is to proceed against him for libel, basing his action on charges contained in his new novel, Upton Sinclair, who is spending the summer at Lake Placid, defied the “Steel Crowd,” as he designated Mr. Corey and his associates, to do their worst.