Between the year 1914, when war broke out, shutting off the export of optical glass from Germany, and 1917, when the United States went into the war, five American organizations—the Bureau of Standards, the Pittsburg Plate Glass Company, Keuffel & Esser, the Spencer Lens Company, and Bausch & Lomb—developed the manufacture of optical glass on a small scale, but in quality the glass was not up to the European standard. In the spring of 1917, scientists of the Carnegie Institution of Washington stepped in to help the manufacturers with their glass problems, and complete coöperation all along the line resulted in a successful industry before many months had gone by. The four commercial producers eventually turned out optical glass more rapidly than both the Army and Navy could use it. Some of this glass was the equal of any ever made in Germany, and much of it, though of “war quality,” was still good enough for many uses. The army ordnance contracts were entirely with Bausch & Lomb and the Pittsburg Plate Glass Company at its Charleroi (Pennsylvania) plant. The production of glass on the war contracts was terminated immediately after the armistice. A large quantity of glass not yet formed into sets of optics was stored at Frankford. The Pittsburg Plate Glass Company did not resume any production, but Bausch & Lomb continued to make optical glass for their own uses.
Those who assume that, because we created an ample optical glass industry during the war, the United States is to be forever free of dependence upon foreign sources of this commodity, probably are too optimistic. There are numerous reasons why an optical glass industry is not likely to survive in the United States, at least on any large scale. The total normal American consumption of optical glass amounts to less than $1,000,000 a year—not enough to support many glass-making establishments. Secondly, nearly all the Allies developed war glass industries of their own, and the result is that the world has a large surplus of optical glass, which, if of good quality, does not deteriorate in storage. Thirdly, the war expansion of the world industry has created facilities above the present normal world requirements. In the fourth place, the industry is a precarious one, subject to heavy losses from carelessness or ineptitude in the mill. In the fifth, there is no tariff protection for American glass, the law permitting the free importation of precision optics for scientific purposes. Finally, there is a long-standing prejudice in favor of European-made scientific instruments, a prejudice against which an American industry would have to fight. Three American producers, however, are said to be making optical glass for their trade.
In anticipation of a possible collapse of the industry, the Bureau of Standards has brought to Washington the glass-making facilities which it set up in a special war plant at Pittsburg. This plant can make two tons of optical glass a month. It is to be operated by the Government with the view both of improving processes and of creating within the Government an expert knowledge of this vital war industry.
The United States carried further than any other nation in the war the substitution of mechanical power for the power of draft animals in the movement of field artillery. Nothing in our army equipment in France did the French, themselves the premier artillerists of the world, admire more than our motorization of artillery. The total contracts for ordnance vehicles represented an expenditure of $400,000,000. The program actually delivered 13,000 vehicles to the A. E. F., produced before the armistice an equal number ready for shipment abroad, and had 60,000 other vehicles under construction when the halt came. The Maxwell-Chalmers plant at Detroit and the Reo plant at Lansing, working in coöperation, were producing 1,100 5-ton tractors a month, and this production represented the military power of 12,000 draft animals and 4,000 men.
The demobilization of this industry was accomplished rapidly. Orders were cut to the bone, merely enough post-armistice production being allowed to enable the plants to dovetail their war business into the resumption of their commercial businesses. Since little special-purpose machinery was required in producing war tractors, the Ordnance Department created no manufacturing center after the armistice as a source of future supply. The war left the Army, however, with a number of engineers who had gained experience in adapting mechanical power to military uses in the field, and these men are continuing a development which, doubtless, will in time eliminate the horse from our artillery regiments.
One of the innovations of the war was the motor-driven mobile repair shop for repairing artillery in the field. Each shop consisted of two sections, with fifteen trucks and fourteen trailers in each section—nearly sixty vehicles to the entire shop. On the trailers were installed the heavy machine tools, and one trailer of each section was equipped with an electric generator for light and power. When the shop was set up for business it presented the spectacle of two rings of vehicles ranged around the two power plants and hooked up with electric cables. The manufacturing program, both before and after the armistice, produced sixteen such shops, consisting of 600 vehicles. Six of these shops have been stored; ten are in use by the permanent establishments. In addition, in terminating the contracts the Ordnance Department came into possession of the unassembled but finished components of eight additional shops. Thousands of jigs, fixtures, and small tools used in this manufacturing project have been stored away and catalogued.
Tank production was drastically curtailed immediately after the armistice. The tank contracts involved the expenditure of $175,000,000. The total production of 6-ton Renault tanks was limited to 950, of which sixty-four were produced before the armistice. The contracts with the Ford Motor Company to build 15,000 3-ton tanks were terminated at once after the armistice, production being limited to the fifteen trial machines produced before November 11, 1918. Of the great 36-ton tanks, Anglo-American design, the Ordnance Department built 100 at Rock Island Arsenal after the armistice, procuring from the British for the purpose the hulls and guns. The tank assembly plant at Châteauroux, France, went to the French Government in the general settlement of 1919 and is now being used as a car repair shop.
No considerations of future reserves of finished materials affected the demobilization of the extensive war industry which was manufacturing our rifles, machine guns, pistols, and the ammunition for them. The production of these articles had been so successful that the moment the war ended the supplies on hand were sufficient for the permanent Army for years to come, with reserve supplies heavy enough to arm a large field force. The interests of the Army, considered alone, therefore, demanded the immediate cessation after the armistice of all this manufacture; but economic considerations and the dictates of good business practice made it expedient to taper off this production gradually, even at the cost of producing more materials than the War Department could possibly use.
Special problems arose in the liquidation of this great industry. In the first place, the factories which made rifles and machine guns were sharply specialized for just this work, making it difficult for them to turn to any commercial production with the same equipment. Several of these plants were specially created for the war work, and therefore had no prewar occupation to which they could turn. It was necessary for them either to close out entirely (as the Eddystone rifle plant of the Midvale Steel & Ordnance Company near Philadelphia actually did do) or to develop some new product. Two of the small-arms plants after the armistice added departments for the manufacture of ball bearings, one went into the production of automobile accessories and sporting arms, and a fourth (which had made bayonets) took up the manufacture of cutlery. It was necessary to give these concerns time to work out these conversions, if an acute problem in unemployment were to be avoided.
The sharp centralization of the small-arms industry in the East was another factor which influenced the Government to permit an unwelcome production after the armistice. Most of the rifles, for instance, were manufactured within a small area in the state of Connecticut. The Winchester plant at New Haven employed 20,000 operatives, the Remington plant at Bridgeport 12,000, and there were several others of this size. To close them all up forthwith would have created a bad industrial situation in this busy and prosperous section of New England.