The few engineering supplies accumulated by the Americans in England were sold to individual buyers. Enemy engineering matériel captured in France by the A. E. F. went to France in the lump-sum sale. In Belgium the captured matériel consisted principally of lumber and sawmill equipment, worth about $250,000, and this went to Belgium to pay that country for assuming the liability for the German ammunition captured by our forces in Belgium.

It was the policy, because of the scarcity of shipping, to return no heavy engineering supplies to the United States, but to bring back such light technical equipment as searchlights, flash-ranging and sound-ranging devices, instruments, and the like. It was, however, expedient to return large quantities of steel rails and beams, because these could serve as ballast in ships; and the Government also ordered the return of a large quantity of road-building machinery for the use of the Bureau of Public Roads. The Engineers saw to it that samples of most of the engineering equipment used by other armies in the World War were shipped to the United States for study here.

The property bargain with France disposed of everything except two large claims against the United States: one for the American use of the French railroads, and the other for the damage wrought by the A. E. F.’s lumbering operations in the French forests. The railroad claim was most intricate and complicated because of the inaccuracy of the records and for other reasons, but it was finally settled in full by allowing the French Government a credit of about $61,000,000 (435,000,000 francs valued at seven to the dollar). The forestry claim was settled by allowing the French a credit of $10,000,000.

The claims of French contractors who had supplied us with engineering materials were settled, along with nearly all other French contractors’ claims, by the United States Liquidation Commission in a blanket negotiation with the French Government. One engineering claim, however, remained unsettled. The contractor had agreed to supply 6,000 demountable barracks to the A. E. F., but he had delivered no buildings by the beginning of the armistice and had made little progress in his contract. Nevertheless, he presented a claim for damages amounting to $600,000. The Liquidation Commission offered him $1,200, and he refused it. His itemized costs included purchases of liquors, ladies’ dressing tables, and oriental rugs, and he even admitted orally that one of his “costs” was a mysterious payment of $4,000 to a French interpreter in the office of the American engineer purchasing officer in France.

On the first day of the armistice there were nearly 200,000 tons of engineering war materials produced and on hand in the United States and awaiting shipment to France. This accumulation was worth $31,000,000. It included hundreds of locomotives, thousands of cars, and tens of thousands of tons of track materials, building materials, general machinery, and tools. Meanwhile the American contracts for the production of such supplies had reached a value of upwards of $365,000,000, and production had reached such rates as 300 locomotives and 1,800 railway cars a month. This business was terminated with the utmost rapidity which was consistent with the manufacturer’s need to convert his factory to other work without undue disturbance to his labor force, and with the Government’s need to acquire adequate military reserves of such supplies and to realize most on the money which it had invested in the enterprise.

When the war industry came to an end, the War Department thus found on its hands great quantities of engineering supplies. Some of these supplies, such as cranes and road-building supplies, were turned over to other departments of the Government for use in public works. Up to May 15, 1920, engineering equipment and supplies had been sold on the market with a gross cash return of over $110,000,000. Since the cost of these materials had been about $128,000,000, the sales return was about 85 per cent of the cost, an extraordinarily high recovery rate. Foreign governments were heavy purchasers, particularly of railroad locomotives and cars. The Engineers reserved from sale and stored in various interior depots an immense reserve of supplies for possible future military use. The principal items in this reserve are as follows:

[9]197Consolidation-type locomotives.
[9]12,750Cars, including gondolas, flat, box, tank, and dump cars.
736Track-miles of standard-gauge railway materials.
353Track-miles of light railway materials.
35Divisions of heavy ponton bridge equipment.
6Divisions of light ponton bridge equipment.
[10]67Divisions of unit equipment.
8160-inch open-type searchlight units (Cadillac trucks).
15436-inch barrel-type searchlight units (Mack trucks).
1Sound-ranging set.
10Bull-Tucker recording sets.
25Flash-ranging sets.
35Ground-ranging sets.

The financial liquidation of the American war business of the Engineers was unusually satisfactory, both because of the celerity with which it was carried out and because of the low cost of its termination to the Government. Shortly before the armistice many of the most important purchasing activities of the Engineers were transferred to the Director of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic, except that the Chief of Engineers continued to buy railroad equipment and several other sorts of heavy materials and also searchlights and ranging apparatus. After the armistice the engineering contracts were consequently terminated and settled by two agencies—the Engineers themselves and the Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic. The Engineer Claims Board was created to liquidate the war engineering industry for the Corps of Engineers, acting, however, as subsidiary to the War Department Claims Board. By May 15, 1920, the Engineer Claims Board had settled up finally 168 of its total of 171 war claims. These claims accounted for a total war business amounting to $238,000,000. Production after the armistice resulted in the delivery of supplies worth $17,000,000, which the War Department paid for at the contract prices. The terminations equaled $218,500,000 in amount, and for this termination the Government had to pay in cancellation costs only a little more than $1,850,000, or less than 1 per cent of the original obligation.

The orders for engineering supplies taken over by the Director of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic amounted to $138,000,000. A considerable part of this production was allowed to go through to completion, and some of the business was transferred to other branches of the War Department for settlement. The Director of Purchase and Storage terminated entirely business amounting to $29,600,000 and paid in termination charges $2,800,000—about 9 per cent of the original obligation.

One engineer contractor, a builder of locomotives, whose contracts were $55,000,000 in amount, canceled the entire business without cost to the Government.