Week by week the labor gangs grew, as the men were able to find places in the attacking line of the industrial battle. Great excavators stalked over the land, pulling themselves along by their dippers which bit out chunks of earth as big as a cart when they "took a-hold"; the smack of pile drivers, the thump of dynamite, and the whistle of dredges filled the air. Buildings sprouted like mushrooms; in the meadow, half a mile from the nearest water, the shipyard of the Foundation Company began to take form. It was the plan to finish the Canal by January, 1920. CANAL PLANS EXPANDED. Work in the meantime had begun on the commodity warehouse and wharf, another facility planned by the Dock Board to relieve the growing pains. Built on the Canal, but opening on the river, it was to perform the same service for general commodities as the Public Cotton Warehouse and the Public Grain Elevator did for those products. Though not a part of the canal plan, the construction of the warehouse at this point was part of the general scheme to concentrate industrial development on that waterway. Later, the Federal Government took over this work and gave New Orleans a $13,000,000 terminal, through which it handled army supplies. It is still using the three warehouses for storage purposes, but has leased the half-mile double-deck wharf to the Dock Board, which is devoting it to the general commerce of the port. In time, the Dock Board hopes to get at least one of the buildings. There can be no doubt but that the enterprise of New Orleans in building the Industrial Canal had a great deal to do with the government's determination to establish a depot at New Orleans. On May 30, the news came out of Washington that the Doullut & Williams Shipbuilding Company had been awarded a $15,000,000 contract by the Emergency Fleet Corporation to build eight ships of 9,600 tons each. This was the largest shipbuilding contract that had been given the South. The Industrial Canal rendered it possible. The firm of Doullut & Williams had been engaged for fifteen years or so in the civil engineering and contracting business in New Orleans. Captain M. P. Doullut had built launches with his own hands when a young man, and dreamed of the time when he would have a yard capable of turning out ocean-going vessels. The Doullut & Williams Shipbuilding Company was organized April 25, 1918, with the following officers: M. P. Doullut, president; Paul Doullut, vice-president; W. Horace Williams, secretary-treasurer and general manager; L. H. Guerin, chief engineer; and James P. Ewin, assistant chief engineer. "I feel that New Orleans is on the eve of a very remarkable development" said Senator Ransdell of Louisiana in a telegram of congratulation, "and earnestly hope our people will continue to work together with energy and hearty accord until we have gone way over the top in shipbuilding and many other lines."