But the special achievements in ship construction of the U. S. Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation deserve more extended mention, for it had built over sixteen per cent of this entire fleet. It devised a new scheme for the rapid production of ships, that of the so-called “fabricating” shipyard. So enormous and so urgent was the need for a large tonnage output that beside it existing facilities were negligible and too much time would be needed for the construction of enough shipyards of the ordinary type. So, while every effort was put forth to renovate and enlarge existing yards and build new ones, several huge yards were constructed for the assembling of the parts of steel ships after they had been made in steel structural works. A ship was designed with simple lines, flat decks and few curves, the design standardized and production of the parts begun in many plants while the building of the big yards was rushed. One of these, having twelve ways for 9,000 ton ships, laid its first keel five months after the signing of the contract for the building of the yard; another, having fifty ways for 7,500 and 8,000 ton ships, laid its first keel, when the yard was half completed, in five months; and another, with twenty-eight ways for 5,000 ton ships, laid its first keel in three months. These three yards, each of which was built and operated by a contracting company, represented an investment of almost $100,000,000. They were equipped to turn out, together, 270,000 tonnage per month, which is more than the tonnage of all the steel ship yards in the country had produced in any entire year for the last previous nine years. These large yards had begun to come into production only a little while before the signing of the armistice. One of the plants included 139 acres, all of which was waste land, overgrown with weeds and brush, when the company signed its contract in September, 1917. A year later its twenty-eight ways were completed, a ship was under construction on each one, fourteen ships had been launched and one had been completed. Docks, railway sidings, shops, offices, had been built and huge stacks of ship-building material covered the ground. A big, four-sided bulletin board, on which was posted each day the progress of every ship on its twenty-eight ways, voiced the spirit of the workers and the management in a slogan across its top that proclaimed the purpose, in letters that fairly shouted, “Three ships a week or bust!”