In selling surplus materials to consumers in the United States, the preference went to charitable and welfare organizations. Hospital equipment, for instance, was offered first to state and municipal hospitals, free clinics, and similar institutions. Prices for medical supplies were fixed far below the prevailing market prices; and yet the Government had manufactured this equipment at such low cost that the financial recovery from the sales represented practically every penny which the War Department had put into the supplies. General supplies were offered first to welfare organizations, the Young Men’s Christian Association, the Boy Scouts, hospitals, sanitariums, and relief societies.

After that came the public. Private dealers were permitted to bid on lots of supplies. Regular days were set apart for the sale of various classes of commodities: Monday, textiles and leather goods; Tuesday, raw materials, machinery, and engineering supplies; Wednesday, general supplies; Thursday, medical supplies and motor vehicles; Friday, clothing; and Saturday, food supplies. These bidding sales were widely advertised, in advance, and bids could be submitted either to the War Department in Washington or to any of the zone, or district, supply offices. The private consumer could buy army food, clothing, textiles, tools, and other commodities of household utility either by parcel post (through the coöperation of the Post Office Department) or at any of the Army’s retail stores, a great chain of which was set up throughout the country.

By sales and transfers the Army, at the end of the first year of effort, had disposed of supplies originally procured under the administration of the Director of Purchase to the value of $357,000,000. The transfers and sales brought back to the War Department more than seventy-seven cents of every dollar originally expended in the production of these goods. The story of the ingenuity displayed by the Government’s officers in selling these and other surplus supplies (particularly the surpluses in the hands of the Ordnance Department and the Air Service after the armistice) is left for another chapter.

Before dropping the subject of the demobilization of the quartermaster war business, however, we should not overlook the disposition of the horses and mules acquired by the Army, but not shipped to France. The Remount Service purchased about 308,000 animals during the war. It started the war with about 90,000 animals on hand. The war losses amounted to 33,000 animals. Approximately 68,000 were shipped to France. Thus, at the time of the armistice the Remount Service had in its stables and corrals nearly 300,000 horses and mules. About 215,000 of these were declared surplus and sold, and the rest were retained for the permanent Army.

The decision of the Remount Service to sell 200,000 animals on the market as rapidly as the market could absorb them was roundly criticized by horsemen, who pointed out that normally the American market had never absorbed more than 60,000 horses and mules in a year. The result would be, the critics declared, that the Government would get fair prices for the first 50,000 or 60,000 animals offered, and after that the surplus animals would be a drag on the market, not only forcing the Government to stand a great financial loss, but so depressing prices that dealers everywhere would suffer. On the other hand, it was costing the Government a dollar a day to feed and care for each of these animals. By retarding the sales the Government might be able to get better prices, but the gain would be more than absorbed by the cost of maintaining the establishment in the meantime.

And so it worked out. The market, indeed, proved itself to be able to absorb the surplus animals, and prices even grew better as the sales progressed. The average price paid was $111 a head, or about 57 per cent of the original average cost of $192. On the other hand, the Government escaped paying heavy maintenance charges.

All the animals were sold at public auctions, 189 of which were held at thirty-nine different places. Great crowds of buyers attended the sales, most of which were held at camps where the animals were quartered. The local post exchanges sold sandwiches and other refreshments to the buyers. Although the Government guaranteed no animals, all of them were carefully examined for blemishes and defects before the sales, and their demerits were noted in the lists read by the auctioneers. The Government could not afford to gain a David Harum reputation as a horse trader, for it had too many animals to sell. If dissatisfaction arose from the earlier sales, it would adversely affect the later ones. Only five complaints from buyers were made after the sales. These were referred to the Purchase Claims Board for settlement.

The Government invested $74,000,000 in animals bought in America during the war. Its net loss on animals sold was $22,000,000, and on animals that died, $6,000,000. The best of the animals on hand after the armistice were retained for use by the permanent Army.

CHAPTER XVI
BUILDINGS AND LANDS

One of the major industrial activities conducted in the United States during the war was the construction of buildings for the Army. The Army’s physical plant, as it existed on the day war was declared, was entirely inadequate for the forces to be mobilized—so inadequate as to be of almost no use at all. Even the old headquarters of the War Department in Washington, which formerly had housed practically all the administrative offices, were none too large to accommodate merely the office staffs of the Secretary of War and his principal assistants, so great was the expansion of the central administration; and as for the tens of thousands of officers, clerks, stenographers, messengers, and other personnel employed by the great producing and operating bureaus, they occupied literally miles of flimsy, unsightly “war buildings,” which spread out like a defacing rash over the fair open spaces of the capital city.