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. | MARINE REVIEW. [May 2, A GARBOARD STRAKE BENDER. The large tool illustrated on this page is a garboard strake bender manufactured by the Watson-Stillman Co. of 204-210 E. Forty-Third street, New York. This company is of late issuing different. catalogues devoted to their various specialties. Their catalogue No. 59 is given up entirely to hydraulic tenders. Referring to this particular tool, Samuel L. Moore & Sons, engineers and ship builders of Elizabeth, N. J., who have had one of them for some time past, say: "We have found it a most desirable ship building tool. The limit of its capacity depends wholly upon the man's ingen- uity who is operating it. We bend all our garboards and boss plates, and in fact can work almost any plate under it necessary for ship construction. We are satisfied the capacity of this ma- chine for bending garboards is sufficient to supply all the ship builders of this continent if the work could be brought to it. The tool stands idle with us a great deal of the time in consequence of our limited amount of work but we would not be without it under any cir- cumstances, as we consider the invest- ment a profitable one, even for so small a quantity of work as we have to do." Of the construction of the tool the manufacturers say: 'In its construc- tion we have employed rolled iron and steel almost exclusively, so that the an- noying breaks which constantly occur in cast iron tools of this large size may be avoided, and at the same time we get a stiff and light bending beam, easily and quickly operated by small cy.inders. The upper or bending girder is sus- pended by links from the pistons of small automatic working cylinders. Large rams, bearing upon a_ saddle formed on the steel end of the beam, force the ends down as desired. To prevent a waste of accumulator power, stops are introduced above the slide so that the upward motion will be stopped at any desired point. The construction of the moving beam is such that the guide is formed with an are struck from the opposite end of the beam, thus allowing perfect freedom of motion. The bending beam is 18 ft. long with a V block 5 in. wide (in sections) upon its bottom. The lower blocks are 5 in. wide, and the tool will bend plates 72 in. wide and allow them to be taken out at the end, or the dies can be separated 15 in. The valves permit either end to be worked at any desired maximum speed, held in position or raised quickly. The raising cylinders can also be released if desired, thus throwing that extra strain on the beam for bending. The total' weight of this machine is about 40,000-lbs. and the bending power 175 tons." TO TEST THE PERSONNEL ACT. It develops that there is considerable feeling among line officers of the navy over decisions of the department in regard to the intent of con- gress in enacting the retirement provisions of the navy personnel act. The department has not placed on these provisions the liberal construc- tion, which, according to the dissatisfied officers, congress intended. There has been much talk of testing the department's rulings in the courts, and it is apparent that some such method must be resorted to in order to secure a change in the present practice of applying the law, as Secretary Long has declined to refer the questions at issue to the attorney general for his opinion. Naval officers who were prime movers in the eftort to reorganize the navy contend that the personnel act was intended primarily to permit officers to reach command rank before they became old men. To do this it was necessary to create vacancies in the higher grades of the line so that the then condition of stagnation in the lower grades would cease. The act provided generally that there should be forty vacancies annually above the grade of junior lieutenant, and the judge advocate general of the navy, Capt. Lemley, in an opinion approved by Secretary Long, held that there should be a specific number of vacancies above the grade of commander, a specific number above the grade of lieutenant commander, and so many in the grade of lieutenant. But the whole number did not miake the required forty. It is over this construction that there is dissatisfaction, the dissatis- fied officers contending that the law was intended to provide that there should not be a specific number of vacancies in each grade, but that applicants for retirement should be retired in the order of their rank, be- ginning with the highest and so down the list of voluntary applications until the number required to cause forty vacancies had been reached, But more recently Secretary Long has confirmed an opinion by Judge Advo- cate General Lemley, which is another blow to the claims of those who maintain that the personnel act is not being applied in accordance with the intent of congress. At its last session congress enacted a law that naval officers advanced for service in the war with Spain should, on being promoted to the next higher grade, be carried as extra numbers, and should be promoted thereafter contemporaneously with the officers of regular number immediately preceding them in each instance. The secre- tary, indorsing Capt. Lemley, holds that the promotion of officers of extra numbers creates vacancies, and that these vacancies shall be counted as of the forty required by law. The effect of this decision is practically to do away with the application of the voluntary and compulsory retirement clauses of the personnel act, for this year at least. Section 8 of the personnel act provides for voluntary retirement. Sec- tion 9 provides that when enough vacancies have not been created by na- tural causes or through voluntary retirement, a board of rear admirals, four governing, shall select for retirement a sufficient number of officers in the specified grades to make up the forty vacancies required, and offi- cers so retired shall have the rank and three-fourths the sea pay of the next higher grade. It is over the construction placed on section 8 by Secretary Long and Judge Advocate General Lemley that line officers are dissatisfied. That section, in addition to giving officers of the grades of captain, commander and lieutenant commander the right to have their names placed on a list of "applicants for voluntary retirement," says: "And when at the end of any fiscal year the average vacancies for the fiscal years subsequent to the passage of this act above the grade of com- mander have been less than thirteen, above the grade of lieutenant com- mander less than twenty, above the grade of lieutenant less than twenty- nine and above the grade of lieutenant (junior grade) less than forty, the president may, in the order of the rank of the applicants, place a sufh- cient number on the retired list with the rank and three-fourths the sea pay of the next higher grade, as now existing, including the grade of commander, to cause the aforesaid vacancies for the fiscal year then being considered." ' Soon after the law was enacted Judge Advocate General Lemley sub- mitted an opinion, the gist of which, approved by Secretary Long, is as follows: "Naturally these words (above the grades of commander less than thirteen, above the grade of lieutenant commander less than twenty, above the grade of lieutenant less than twenty-nine, and above the grade of lieutenant, junior grade, less than forty) seem to imply that a sufficient number of officers, and no more, above each grade named are to be placed on the retired list to create the prescribed number of vacancies in each of said grades." One of the two principal objections to this ruling is that its applica- tion will not carry out the direction of congress that there shall be forty vacancies every year. It is contended also that the department's ruling 1s wrong in another important particular. Naval officers say that it will be perfectly evident to any who will take the trouble to carefully read sec- tion 8 that there is no clause in it that prescribes a particular number of vacancies for any single grade, and they call attention to the omission by Capt. Lemley of any illusion to a very important restrictive clause, namely, that the vacancies are to be caused "in the order of the rank of the appli- cants." They hold that Capt. Lemley's and the department's ruling means that the clause providing for thirteen vacancies above the grade of com- mander is the only one to be executed strictly as it reads, that the clauses providing for twenty vacancies above the grade of lieutenant com- mander and twenty-nine vacancies above the grade of lieutenant are not to be considered as they read, and the fourth clause pro- viding for forty vacancies above the grade of junior licutenant is to be ignored entirely. One way of explaining the department's ruling has been put into this form: "Suppose a general, previous to starting his orderly on a journey of 668 miles, should hand him written instructions as follows: 'Orderly, here are three purses, marked No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3, containing various sums of money. In paying the expenses of your journey you must first, exhaust the money in No. 1; when you find you have no more money in No. 1 you must begin spending from No. 2; when you find you have no more money in No. 2 you may begin spending from No. 3; but you must not spend more than $18 in the first eighty-eight miles of your journey,