America's Munitions 1917-1918

by Benedict Crowell; United States. War Department

The Army raised against Germany had to have stout shoes for its feet. It required warm uniforms and overcoats and good socks and underwear. It had to have heavy blankets for its beds. The men needed raincoats and rubber boots for wet and muddy weather. Tentage was required, pup tents for the front and large tents and flies at the camps. Belts and bandoleers of cotton webbing added to the soldier's efficiency as a rifleman or machine gunner.

To procure these and other supplies for an American Army that eventually reached the strength of 3,750,000 men required the best brains in the textile, rubber fabric, and leather goods industries. From the counting rooms, from the laboratories, and from the American factories the needs of the Government called to Washington several hundred men, experts in a thousand lines, and put them into American officers' uniforms. Eventually the various agencies of the War Department purchasing these supplies were centralized in a single division known as the Clothing and Equipage Division of the Office of the Director of Purchase and Storage, which in turn was part of the Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic.

The total cost of this necessary equipment of textiles and leather and rubber goods was approximately $2,100,000,000. Of the enormous sum of money appropriated for the so-called quartermaster activities, a full one-quarter went for clothing and equipage of this sort.

The group who handled this enormous manufacturing effort not only conducted one of the biggest undertakings of the war but did it in a way to command the admiration of those who knew the story of what was going on. The division turned scientific attention, and that means the attention of real scientists, to the proper construction of all sorts of articles. It designed new styles of soldiers' clothing adapted in every curve and line to the service in France. It standardized dyes and made studies of protective coloring. It produced highly specialized shoes. It saved millions of dollars by the scientific study of specifications of various articles. It educated manufacturers in the production of articles strange to their experience, and in some cases developed entirely new industries. At one time it constituted the entire wool trade of the United States, since it had optioned every pound of wool in sight and had its agents out gathering up the excess wool of the earth. It was a shipmaster, an employer of men, a reformer in labor conditions, and an inventor and originator of new products.

The organization was important not only for the size of its business but because it dealt more intimately with the individual soldier than perhaps any other production branch of the Government, with the possible exception of the branch which fed him. It might seem to be a fairly easy proposition to buy clothing for a soldier, his tent, and the bed clothing that kept him warm in active service or when he was a patient in a military hospital. But it was not a simple task. None of these articles was standard for civilian use, either in material, color, or pattern. Everything had to be made to order. The ordinary factory could not begin work on contracts for these supplies on a minute's notice, but usually only after special and sometimes costly preparation.

And as the Army grew in size it had to have large quantities of special clothing. Cooks needed cotton aprons, and blacksmiths leather ones. Linemen had to have special gloves; hospital orderlies and waiters at messes required white duck suits; motorcyclists needed hoods; laborers, overalls; and firemen, helmets. There were special garments for aviators. We began capturing prisoners and they had to have special uniforms. Convalescents at hospitals needed special suits. The women nurses of the Army were supplied with uniforms, something entirely outside of previous Army experience.

The Government was something more than the designer and manufacturer of these goods, drawing the specifications, placing the orders, and then teaching the processes of manufacture in the thousands of factories which had virtually become Government plants. The clothing and equipage organization had to go further back and become the actual procurer of the raw materials; and this phase of its work eventually became one of the largest and most spectacular and romantic elements of the whole undertaking. In addition to procuring the raw cotton and the raw wool and the hides, the Government had to go into the manufacture of cloth and the tanning of leather to supply these commodities to the manufacturers of the finished articles. The Government went into a raw materials market which was already glutted with orders from the allied governments and from domestic consumption. It went into this market at first without money, since funds on the scale demanded were not available between March 4, 1917, and June 15 of the same year; and it had to buy on credit and secure the commodities in the face of cash bidding for them.

Nevertheless the whole enormous undertaking was successfully carried through. Except in rare instances, the American soldier never lacked for necessary supplies of this character. The organization which handled the work originally consisted of 6 officers and 25 clerks. When the armistice was signed this great purchasing and manufacturing agency had an enrollment of 1,693 people.

Wool was the most important of the raw materials to be procured, since wool entered into the composition of more items than any other material. Uniforms, overcoats, underwear, socks, breeches, shirts, and many other articles had to be made entirely or partially of wool. The purchases of woolen breeches alone during the war period amounted to 13,176,000 pairs. On September 10, 1918, the wool experts of the army estimated the Nation's total needs for wool up to June 30, 1919. The War Department, it was found, during this time would require 246,000,000 pounds of clean wool; the allotment to civilian needs was but 15,000,000 pounds. In other words, the war demands were to absorb practically the entire supply of wool; civilians were to be forced to do without it almost entirely.

Soon after the declaration of war the Quartermaster Corps estimated that it would require about 100,000,000 pounds of scoured wool to meet the initial demands of the Army in 1917. A meeting was called of the principal wool dealers of the United States, most of them from Boston, and a quick inventory was taken of the available wool supplies, not only in the United States, but on order from foreign countries. It was found that there was in sight 78,000,000 pounds of greasy wool, which, after being scoured, would produce 35,000,000 pounds of wool of the quality needed. This was barely one-third of the Army's demand alone. It should be noted, however, that this inventory was taken just before the annual American clip, which would be finished by the end of July.