Assembly department.
Final inspection department.
FOUR INTERIOR VIEWS OF GAS MASK PLANT.
All of the masks produced in the fall of 1917 were still regarded as experimental and not yet up to the standard of masks which we were willing to supply for actual service at the front. Consequently, not one of them was exported, but the entire 1917 production, after the first order of 25,000, was sent only to the training camps in this country. By January 8, 1918, we were producing masks which we were willing to put into actual service, and on that date the manufacture of masks for export was started.
In January we exported 54,000 masks, which was 16,000 less than the schedule which we had set for ourselves. But by February 20 we had wiped out this deficit with a little over, for our schedule by that date called for the production of 141,000 gas masks, and we had produced 142,000.
Late in the fall of 1917 the requirements of the Expeditionary Forces were reanalyzed in the light of information gathered abroad and in accordance with the new military program. Requirements were multiplied almost fourfold. Let us see how these requirements were met, and what difficulties were solved in the course of the effort.
Experience had already shown that for many reasons the Government needed its own mask factory, where improvements could be adopted as soon as made and where inspections and the storage of parts could be more centralized than in private plants.