“When the contract was made for the ship, wages for shipwrights were $1.75 per day, and in less than two months they rose to $3 per day. We contracted for all the copper sheathing and bolts the day after signing the contract at twenty-nine cents per pound; in four months it was sixty cents per pound. Materials in general went up from 50 to 100 per cent. before we finished the ship. “Great and radical changes have since occurred, but, primitive as the ‘New Ironsides’ seems in comparison with modern battleships, it is doubtful if any one now existing will ever see as much fighting or make so much history as she did. Last July, in an address read before the Naval War College at Newport, I said: “‘I cannot better illustrate my point than by comparing the first and the last sea-going battleships built and delivered to the government by Cramp. The first was the ‘New Ironsides,’ built in 1862. The last is the ‘Iowa,’ completed in 1897. Each represented or represents the maximum development of its day. “‘The ‘New Ironsides’ had one machine, her main engine, involving two steam-cylinders. The ‘Iowa’ has seventy-one machines, involving one hundred and thirty-seven steam-cylinders. “‘The guns of the ‘New Ironsides’ were worked, the ammunition hoisted, the ship steered, the engine started and reversed, her boats handled, in short, all functions of fighting and manœuvring, by hand. The ship was lighted by oil lamps and ventilated, when at all, by natural air currents. Though, as I said, the most advanced type of her day, she differed from her greater battleship predecessor, the old three-decker ‘Pennsylvania,’ only in four inches of iron side armor and auxiliary steam propulsion. She carried fewer guns on fewer decks than the ‘Pennsylvania,’ but her battery was nevertheless of much greater ballistic power. “‘In the ‘Iowa’ it may almost be said that nothing is done by hand except the opening and closing of throttles and pressing of electric buttons. Her guns are loaded, trained, and fired, her ammunition hoisted, her turrets turned, her torpedoes, mechanisms in themselves, are tubed and ejected, the ship steered, her boats hoisted out and in, and the interior lighted and ventilated, the great search-light operated, and even orders transmitted from bridge or conning-tower to all parts by mechanical appliances. “‘Surely no more striking view than this of the development of thirty-five years could be afforded.’ “The battery of the ‘New Ironsides’ was mounted in broadside, and she had eight ports of a side, out of which she fought seven 11-inch Dahlgrens and one 200-pounder Parrott, the maximum train or arc of fire being about 45 degrees.