Credit: Library of Congress
In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Bethlehem Steel chairman of the board Charles Schwab Director General of the Emergency Fleet Corporation and gave him a free hand to reorganize the inefficient agency. Schwab moved the agency's headquarters to Philadelphia, then became a national hero for the speed and efficiency with which he turned out ships. By the end of the war, 300,000 workers at the nation's 150 shipyards had built 3,000 ships at a cost of $5 billion. In this 1918 poster, designed to promote worker commitment, quoted Schwab calling on shipyard workers "to feel that they are working with me, not for me."
