There was a great deal more to the demobilization of the war ordnance industry than the mere office operation of settling with the contractors. It included an immense field activity of utmost practical interest both to the War Department and to the public. The armistice found the United States in a state of industrial preparation for war that would have been unattainable under any other circumstances. The world situation had forced us to turn American industry into a vast munitions plant which, at the cessation of hostilities, was just beginning to get into production with some of the most essential materials of warfare. That plant had been acquired only at the cost of heavy mortgage (in the form of government war bonds) placed upon the future, and hence it would have been folly to close out the business entirely with nothing to show for the whole effort but debts and the realization that the existence of the business had had a psychological effect in winning the war and protecting the United States. The sensible thing to do was to save out of the dismantling of war industry a material equipment which should afford national military insurance for years to come; and that was what the Ordnance Department did.
In building up this equipment the Ordnance Department was confronted with the three major questions of (1) what quantities of materials to allow the industry to go on and produce before closing down finally, (2) what to do with the buildings and machinery which the Government had provided for the enterprise, and (3) what disposition to make of surpluses of both materials and facilities beyond the Government’s future needs.
Artillery constitutes the most important of all war supplies. Upon the production of artillery and its ammunition the Government expended more money than upon any other single class of materials. From a manufacturing standpoint, a unit of artillery consists of three principal parts—the gun tube itself, the recuperator (or recoil mechanism), and the carriage with its attending caissons. Each of these manufacturing phases called into existence during 1917–1918 huge industries. On the day of the armistice nineteen mills, built new from the ground up, were turning out gun and howitzer tubes at the rate of nearly 800 a month, a figure that may be contrasted with the annual American production of seventy-five guns before 1917. Five great plants, built new at a cost of many millions, were engaged in building recuperators of French design, and other producers were manufacturing American- and British-type recoil mechanisms. The carriages, limbers, and caissons, being, after all, wheeled vehicles, offered no particular manufacturing problem, and it was therefore unnecessary to create a new industry to produce them. Nevertheless, the carriage contracts engaged a large section of the car- and truck-building industries of the United States. Yet, for the reason that the vehicle builders could come quickly into the production of artillery carriages, the physical demobilization of this branch of the industry offered little difficulty, the chief problems centering around the termination of the production of gun tubes and recuperators. These problems involved questions of reserves to be produced before the industries were dissolved and the storage afterwards of the manufacturing facilities to give the United States a potential producing capacity that could be quickly utilized in the event of another war.
Photo by Howard E. Coffin
HAVOC WROUGHT BY GERMAN GUNS AT FORT NEAR RHEIMS
Photo by Howard E. Coffin
“WIPERS” READY FOR TOURISTS
Several important considerations influenced the responses to these questions. In the first place our whole artillery manufacturing project had been aimed at the year 1919, and in the interim the American Expeditionary Forces purchased heavy quantities of artillery in France and England—in all, nearly 5,500 field guns of the latest and best designs. Including captured matériel, the A. E. F. sent back to the United States after the armistice about 6,000 guns, with their full equipment of limbers, caissons, and supply vehicles. This in itself was a quantity sufficient to arm a large field force; and, on the face of it, this reserve seemed to make unnecessary any post-armistice production at all from our own ordnance plants. As a counterbalance, however, there was the industrial situation. The gun plants were heavy employers of labor. To close them all down forthwith might have created a serious amount of unemployment, to the detriment of the national prosperity. Then, too, it was good business to order the completion of matériel almost complete on the day of the armistice, and this procedure was adopted as a general policy.