Books and Manuscripts

Philadelphia: Issued by Publications Section Emergency Fleet Corporation, ca. 1918. Original color lithographic poster. Printed in Boston by the Forbes Lithographic Company. 36 x 39 1/4 (91 x 100 cm). Creasing along left side and top right corner; scattered edge-wear and short closed tears. Rawls, p. 76

A powerful image of American industrial might, issued by the U.S. Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation, during the First World War. "On September 7, 1916, under great incentive to rebuild the country's once-proud merchant fleet...President Wilson signed the Shipping Act into law. It made provisions for setting up a Shipping Board to purchase, charter, requisition, and operate a commercial fleet, and it established an Emergency Fleet Corporation to be responsible for new construction. Soon every coastal shipyard in America was laying keels for the new merchant fleet. The Emergency Fleet Corporation was headed by Charles M. Schwab of Bethlehem Steel...By the summer of 1918 the Emergency Fleet Corporation had a great array of shipbuilding facilities under its direction, including the huge Hog Island shipyard near Philadelphia, which could launch seventy-eight ships at once. The country was fast approaching the goal of launching one hundred ships a day..." (Walton Rawls, Wake Up, America!, p.75-77).