Too Efficient?

"No corporation," wrote Commander Jacob Stepp to the Navy Department, "can afford to juggle with the proper hygiene of its establishment."

Commander Stepp, surgeon of the U. S. scouting fleet, was making a special report to his superiors. The particular corporation he had in mind was the U. S. Navy. He questioned if this corporation was not "juggling" in permitting "maddening engineering competition" between its various elements, "especially when we consider the deleterious effects, on the health and morale of a selected personnel, of permitting a reduction of the standard allowances of heat, ventilation, water and light." Modern battleship design, as every one knows, seeks to eliminate waste space, waste weight, superfluous comfort.