Higgins is the Name

While citizens and Senators chivied him with demands for more ships faster, War Shipping Administration's Jerry Land had one good answer anyway. He could & did point to a New Orleans shipbuilder named Andrew Jackson Higgins, who, he said, was engaged upon "the most unique type of ship construction ever attempted in the world."

Details of this "unique" job are a military secret, but, in broad outline, it is a mass-production method for building cargo ships that should dwarf World War I's Hog Island. Higgins' swelling backlog includes a minimum 200 Liberty ships--the biggest single order the Maritime Commission ever placed.

Land is not the first man to bet on Andrew Jackson Higgins. Big, ruddy, Irish "A. J."--who would rather be shot than called Andy--has been betting on himself ever since the age of nine, when he owned seven lawn mowers in Columbus, Neb. and ran the town's lawn-mowing business. By the age of 22 he was running a sawmill in Mobile. The depression of 1907 cleaned him out. Since then, he has been cleaned out by every depression that came along. In 1908 he started over again with 15-c- and a mandolin (which he pawned), by World War I had a flourishing lumber and export business. In 1922 his New Orleans lumber business crashed and he had to sell his wife's jewelry to keep going.

A. J.'s falls, and his comebacks, were due less to lumber than to his passion for boats. By the time he crashed hardest (in 1931) he was known in New Orleans for designing speedboats that answered a rum runner's prayer--and for designing other speedboats that the Feds used to chase them.

In 1930, his And How shattered the New Orleans to St. Louis record; next year, his Greyhound did even better: 72 hrs. 4 min. for the 1,200 miles, a record still. As he worked with his racers, he evolved a boat that could jump over logs and even small spits of land without injuring propeller or other vital organs. From this grew the Higgins Eureka, a 36-foot motorboat with a spoonbill bow, a V midship section, and a semi-tunnel protecting the propeller, so sturdy that it can rush right up on a beach without hurting itself.

Oil companies used the Eureka for exploration trips in the Louisiana bayous, later tried it on the Amazon, in the Persian Gulf, in the Far East. But it took war to put A. J. Higgins into the big time. His Higgins Industries, Inc. (70% owned by A.J. and his family) went into receivership in July 1931 with a total plant and equipment account of $2,565. As late as 1935, the company's total sales were only $87,000. But the next year the U.S. Engineers Corps gave him an order for two river steamer inspection boats. By 1939, A.J. was making Eurekas not only for the U.S. Navy, but for the British and Finland (he was made Finland's New Orleans consul, for "services rendered"). Last year his sales were over $1,000,000 a month. His new City Park Avenue plant-- "the largest boat-building plant under one roof"--was dedicated last summer with a smashing Navy demonstration of what Higgins Industries products could do. Main Higgins products:

> Eureka landing boats, which, A.J. likes to say, could have accomplished the Dunkirk evacuation in less than half the time the British took.

> Motor torpedo (mosquito) boats, which carry punishing armament for their 70-80-ft. size: two anti-aircraft guns, four torpedo tubes, eight depth charges, armor-piercing guns. These little killers are built in an old tombstone factory that A.J. expanded into a $1,600,000 plant. Britain uses them to patrol the English Channel.

> A Higgins-patented remote-control reversal mechanism that helps make Higgins boats miracles of maneuverability: e.g., the Eureka can turn in one to one-third times its length in reverse, can back up from a beach almost as fast as it can hurtle on to it.

But the biggest Higgins industry of all is the $32,000,000 shipyard now under way for his Liberty ship order. For it the Army is dredging a canal, along which the ships abuilding will move from station to station, two abreast. A.J. thinks this "floating assembly line" technique will enable him to finish 24 ships a month. He worked it out himself, although the British had a similar plan which they failed to develop.

Higgins' labor-training problem alone is staggering. So is the problem of housing an eventual force of 50,000 men. But husky, blue-eyed, free-wheeling A.J. is already looking ahead. Says he: "Those smart bastards in the East and North better look out or I'll be building my own engines too."

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