With the necessary expansion then confronting us, any other policy would have meant making face pieces in half a dozen or more private plants, all starting at once with organizations untrained for this work. This would have been fatal, for even with the Goodyear and Goodrich companies manufacturing face pieces in Akron and the Kenyon Manufacturing Co. making them in Brooklyn, we found it most difficult to maintain uniform standards in all the plants. As new points came up, it was constantly necessary to interchange inspection personnel and to send men from one plant to another to teach manufacturing wrinkles. Such practices consumed more personnel than we could train in the time available. Moreover, it was impossible under the conditions that we were then facing to build up more than barely adequate supplies of gas mask parts and such raw materials as special fabrics. To have operated many more face-piece plants would have meant to divide these stocks of fabrics, elastic, tape, etc., still further. To have kept each of these plants properly stocked, under the existing traffic conditions, would have been impossible. A big central gas-defense plant was the only solution of our difficulties.
The order approving the establishment of the gas-defense plant was signed by Secretary Baker on November 20, 1917. The officers of the Gas Defense Division found in Long Island City, not far from the new chemical plant at Astoria, a group of modern concrete factory buildings which had been put up in this newly developed section by several different concerns, among them the Ford Motor Co., the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., and the National Casket Co. One of these buildings, known as the Stewart Building, was taken over by the Government and modern machinery was installed. Mr. R. R. Richardson, of Chicago, was appointed plant manager with a salary of $1 per year. He quickly set to work organizing the factory and its staff. On January 9, 1918, the first few factory operators were hired. Five days later the executive offices at the plant were ready for occupancy. The plant grew apace. One by one the other buildings were absorbed and added to the establishment—first the Goodyear Tire & Rubber building, then the National Casket building. Next a long storage building was built between the Stewart and the Goodyear buildings. Runways were built which connected up the various buildings, and, finally, in July, the Ford Motor building was taken over and connected up to complete the group.
Thus by the summer of 1918 we occupied five large buildings, with a total of over 1,000,000 square feet, or 20 acres, of floor space, connected up to make the gas-defense plant. Of the 12,000 employees in this plant, 8,600 were women. Endeavors were made as far as possible to hire those who had near relatives with the American Expeditionary Forces. The degree of care required in the manufacture of masks was beyond anything known in normal industry, and we rightly believed that this personal interest in the work would bring about greater care in manufacture and inspection. Since the factory was working at top speed a great deal of attention was paid to welfare work. Women employees were given 12-minute rest periods both in the morning and the afternoon, and completely furnished attractive rest and recreation rooms were set apart for women in the factory.
GAS-DEFENSE PLANT AT LONG ISLAND CITY.
EMPLOYEES OF GAS-DEFENSE PLANT LONG ISLAND CITY, NOVEMBER 11, 1918.
The plant was unique in more than one respect. At the very start it attempted the supposedly impossible, for it combined in its staff and in its working organization civilian and military personnel. The manager was a civilian, the assistant manager was Lieut. Col. Coonley. Below them on the next tier of the organization were Army officers in charge of several departments and civilians in charge of others. Throughout the plant were certain groups of women workers or inspectors in charge of civilians were others; in charge of sergeants or even privates. The arrangement worked out well and the whole organization pulled together as one team, without reference to civilian or military status. Again, at the start there was laid down a policy of inspection at every single stage of manufacture. The incoming parts, though already inspected at their source, were reinspected and retested. After every operation in the manufacture of the face piece there came an inspection by specially trained women set apart from the operators. Then again, there was a special control inspection. After the face piece was finished, and when assembly was complete, the entire mask went to a final inspection where it was looked over by several trained women, who worked in dark closets and inspected the face pieces over a bright light to make sure that no pin pricks had been made, either maliciously or otherwise. Furthermore, wherever there was an inspector there was a system of checking his or her accuracy, for 5 per cent of every inspector's work was periodically selected at random and checked over by other inspectors.
Hand in hand with this went many of the latest developments of factory operation. The best machinery was employed, conveyors were used wherever possible, and, when changes in the size of the operation or the design of the mask made it advisable, the factory was at once rearranged in order that the flow might always be orderly and continuous.