from 10 to 15 cents a day.” Preparing to leave for Boston, Isherwood warned the Secretary of the difficulty in obtaining any contracts for engines. He would try to persuade the builders to take as many engines as possible, but this would be a formidable task, since, “the principal objection to the price offered is the expectation that labor and materials will advance 16 per centum before the work can be completed.” Little wonder that the engine builders demanded a fat margin of profit.22
When the Navy Department planned to build a new group of larger geared engines, in 1863, Isherwood found only three builders willing to consider the job. Asking them to build the machinery in ten months, he found that the contractors refused to do the work in less than twelve. They had the facilities to do the job in ten months, they said, but lacked the raw materials and skilled labor, regardless of the price they were willing to pay to hire such labor. Isherwood had to agree to the longer time period and to the price of $700,000 for each engine, which was actually not too steep, he reflected in a letter to Welles, “when the present enormous rates for wages and materials are considered, with the great prospective increase anticipated in both.”23
Traveling constantly to inspect vessels and make contracts for new ones, Isherwood could not afford any interruptions. When he fell from a ladder while inspecting the Tacony, in Philadelphia, he refused to stop work, although he had badly sprained his ankle and possibly fractured some of the smaller bones in his foot. With his ankle too swollen to determine the extent of his injuries, Isherwood wrote Assistant Secretary Fox on July 2, 1863, “I shall be in Washington Monday morning, on a pair of crutches I regret to add, but I shall be there.,, Furious at the delays caused by this ill-timed injury, Isherwood, oblivious of his own discomfort, apologized to Fox, “Nothing can be more inopportune than this accident. The pain and personal inconvenience I do not regard, but the loss of time, now so precious, grieves me much.” Refusing to rest his ankle, Isherwood had it encased in a bandage filled with crushed ice, and hobbled into the offices of New York machinery builders, seeking contracts. His insistence on carrying on business as usual occasionally produced a ludicrous situation. When visiting the offices of Morris and Towne, New York engine builders, Isherwood was able to discuss engine contracts successfully with these men, but, as he wryly remarked, “with my back on the floor and Mr. Towne fomenting the ankle with ice water.”24
As the war continued, the Navy Department found it harder to obtain its machinery. In February, 1864, when asking for estimates on a group of thirty engines for the Sassacus class of double-enders, Isherwood received only four proposals. Setting the price and building time on the basis of these estimates, he once again trudged around the country, successfully restraining his blunt and tactless nature while applying “much personal solicitation” to get twenty-seven of the engines contracted for. As ever, the price was too low and the time required was too short. In order to make his contracts at all, Isherwood had to promise not to exact penalty payments from contractors if they ran over the allotted time, so long as they continued to act in good faith. As he told Welles, he could not have contracted for more than six engines without this promise to make the forfeiture clause a dead letter.
“Unexpected and unprecedented rise of price in material and labor . . . disorganization of labor by strikes and its withdrawal for military purposes . . . difficulty of procuring materials . . .” appeared constantly in the reports of Isherwood to his superior, and there was no indication that conditions would improve.25
To further complicate the Engineer in Chief’s duties, there was intense competition for scarce skilled labor between private builders and the government Navy yards. Handicapped by the inability to adjust their wage rates freely to meet the rising costs of labor, the Navy yards soon found themselves unable to compete with private yards for the inadequate supply of workers. As a result, the Navy Department had to farm out its repair work to private yards, “where the most exorbitant prices are charged,” although tools lay idle in its own yards.
To alleviate this uneconomic situation, Isherwood urged Welles to obtain from the government an authorization to offer workers up to a 50 per cent increase in their wages, in order to keep them from leaving. Convinced that it would be more economical to pay much higher wages if this could keep the government yards busy, Isherwood asserted, in a letter to Welles, August 22, 1864, that the Navy would save an “immense amount of money annually by doing its own work.” As it was, many costly tools were now standing idle while the government had to depend on the unpredictable, often irresponsible, and always costly private builders.26
Welles realized the need for utilizing government facilities to the fullest, and, along with his Engineer in Chief, he wished to increase greatly the size and capacity of the Navy yards. Urging the establishment of a new Navy yard for iron vessels and machinery, Welles followed Isherwood’s and Lenthall’s lead in seeking to lessen the government’s dependence on private contractors.
During the war, Isherwood grew more and more pessimistic about the motives of private builders; and in his annual reports to Welles, he sharply criticized their business operations. Only interested in profits, they naturally preferred private to government work, he felt, since the latter, at best, provided a temporary boom in their industry, while they based their business over the years on private construction. As these builders operated with an eye to the least cost for themselves, they built engines for the Navy just to “answer a temporary purpose, using of course the poorest materials and least skilled labor because [it was] the cheapest.” For this reason, engines built in government yards would always be better, Isherwood insisted, since the Navy Department stressed reliability and durability in the products it made for itself, regardless of cost. Not having to worry about profits “paid to wealthy capitalists,” the government manufacturing facilities could afford to employ the most skilled workers at the highest rates, in order to insure the best workmanship.27
Isherwood felt that he had learned a valuable business lesson during the Civil War. Concerning the “popular impression” that the government could depend on private yards in time of war, he asserted, “such expectation would prove wholly fallacious.” Drawing from his wartime experience with private contractors, he maintained that the facilities in private yards were inadequate even for the demands for privateers which, of course, would take precedence over any government work, as they had during the Civil War. Regardless of contract stipulations, private builders would always postpone government work to concentrate on the more lucrative private jobs. The Navy Department would always find itself saddled with inexcusable delays of vitally needed work while the private builders fattened themselves on immense profits, enough to pay, in one or two years, for the entire cost of equipping all the Navy yards. The only solution, Isherwood concluded, was for the Navy Department to have its own machine shops, large and complete enough to handle its own needs.28
Such growth of government facilities was not to occur in the 1860’s. Apart from the strong objections naturally raised by private builders who had no desire to lose this government work, even if it was at times marginal, there was the thorny problem of where to build such facilities and how much they would cost. The bitter and lengthy debate in the late 1860’s over the establishment of the League Island Navy Yard, at Philadelphia, is an instructive example of the problems that arose in locating a large new government facility. Moreover, after the Civil War, Congress was in no mood to authorize large expenditures on the Navy.
Isherwood’s difficulties in finding skilled labor existed even in his own office. The increase of work brought on by wartime demands was more than his small staff could handle. In September, 1863, Isherwood asked Welles for another assistant draftsman, because of the great increase in the drafting department’s work—most of which was on Isherwood’s own engine designs. However, even with the Secretary’s approval of this request, his problems were not over. A month later he wrote Welles, informing him that a naval engineer was currently filling in as the assistant draftsman because, at the government-regulated salary of $1,200, Isherwood could not find any civilian to take the job. As it was, he had raised the engineer’s salary from $800 to $1,000 a year.
The
