ARMY & NAVY: Profane Proposal

Statistics are usually more decorative than useful. Although it is true that Sweden’s annual match output would reach to the moon if laid end-to-end, no lunatic ever thought of asking Swedish Match Tycoon Ivar Kreuger to make his statistic come true.

But Mayor James Gifford Newbegin of Tacoma, Wash., had cause last week to be glad he had remembered a statistic about the Navy’s 33,000-ton airplane carrier Lexington.

To suggest the tremendous power of the Lexington, the Navy’s publicists have broadcast the fact that her 190.000 h. p. turbo-electric engines could develop enough electricity “to light a city the size of Philadelphia, to operate the transit facilities of a city the size of New York.”

Mayor Newbegin of Tacoma was glad he remembered that fact because Tacoma (pop. 110.000 ) badly needed light, badly needed power. Cushman Dam which supplies water for the city-owned plant was dangerously low. Where four inches of rain had fallen last October, this October fell less than one inch. Abandoned private steam plants were prepared for operation. Housewives had to be told to cut down on current. Only every other street light burned at night. Electrical signs were shut off. The lights on the tower of the city hall went dark for the first time in 30 years.

But there was no darkness in the mind of Tacoma’s Mayor James Gifford New-begin. Remembering the Navy’s statistic, and realizing that the Lexington was tied up at the Puget Sound Navy Yard at Bremerton, not 30 miles away, he wired the Navy Department in Washington and asked the loan of its power plant.

“Stuff and nonsense” cried Washington’s seadogs at this profane proposal. The mayor’s request was refused. The Lexington was ordered to sail from Bremerton. Undismayed, Mayor Newbegin appealed to President Hoover, emphasized the emergency confronting Tacoma.

Secretary of the Navy Adams cancelled the Lexington’s sailing orders, reconsidered Tacoma’s request. Naval officers admitted that the Lexington’s 190,000 h. p. plant could generate nearly three times (140,000 kilowatts) the amount of electricity required by Tacoma (50,000 kilo-watts), that transfusion of this power from the ship to the city’s distributing stations was altogether practicable. But if the ship were sent, might not a precedent be set—civilians being the importunate souls they are—that would keep the Lexington dashing up and down the Pacific Coast, and her sister the Saratoga up and down the Atlantic, turning on “emergency” power every time a river ran low? Washington’s Senator Wesley Livsey Jones persuaded Secretary Adams that Tacoma’s situation was really growing grave. Secretary Adams said he could not let the Lexington help out unless Tacoma would promise to use only an absolutely essential minimum of the ship’s energy. Senator Jones so advised Tacoma, which promised eagerly, waited for its warlike savior to appear.