Through a scientific study of the problem, notable reforms in the matter of fitting soldiers were brought about. When the men were coming in greatest numbers from civilian life to the training camps they were often put to great inconvenience in securing proper clothing. Each man would ask for such sizes as he thought were correct, but it often happened that the garments supplied to him did not fit him, and he thereafter spent some hours or even days swapping garments with other recruits until he eventually acquired an outfit somewhere near his size. Then, too, there was confusion in the way the articles were supplied to the men, who sometimes had to stand in line all day long, awaiting their turn at the issue windows.
The matter of fitting was satisfactorily solved by adopting the so-called foolproof size labels. The labels originally used were merely paper tags pinned to the garments, and in the handling of garments by men unfamiliar with the fitting of ready-made clothing mistakes often resulted. As in the case of civilian clothing, all Army clothing was divided into four classes, known as "longs," "shorts," "stouts," and "regulars." A garment of any size would come in these four classes. The labels were marked with diagonal, colored stripes to indicate the general characteristics of the garment to which it was attached. Thus green meant a "short," red indicated a "long," and yellow showed the garment to be a "stout." The soldier was pretty sure to remember the color of the stripe attached to the garment that fitted him. If he were a green striper, he would refuse to accept anything that did not bear a green stripe on its ticket.
Before hostilities ceased a system providing a more scientific issue of clothing to recruits had been introduced. Under this system the recruit would enter the supply building at one end and there, in a special room, strip himself of his civilian clothing. He would thereupon enter the mill as naked as the Lord made him. He would stop first at the underwear counter, where he would procure garments that fitted him, would don them, and then pass on to the hosiery counter. Thus he would progress down the line, eventually emerging from the other end of the building a fully dressed American soldier, the process reminding one of the progress of an automobile through the Ford factory.
It required the services of some 4,000 inspectors to supervise the garment-making in thousands of shops scattered throughout the country. This inspection also looked at the character of the shops taking contracts, and the Government was sometimes hard put to it to prevent child labor and sweat shop production in the work.
At one time there came a rush order from France to supply several hundred thousand mackinaws. An officer who was familiar with, mackinaws was sent out from Washington to buy them from goods in stock. He accomplished his mission in 10 days, literally baring the shelves of the United States of these garments, his purchases including the extensive quantities of mackinaws held by mail-order houses in Chicago.
It was always a problem in clothing the Army to find olive-drab dyes that were fast in color. The first dyes used were apt to fade quickly. A certain dye was of the proper color, yet it was found on test to have the peculiar characteristic of being visible at a distance. As the new American synthetic dye industry expanded and processes were perfected, the officers of the Clothing and Equipage Division were able to cooperate with the American dye makers to produce satisfactory dyes.
Yet while the olive-drab dye used in dyeing coats and trousers seemed to withstand the sun and rain, that used in coloring the leggins proved to be fugitive to a remarkable degree. It seemed to be impossible to produce a dye that would hold its shade in leggins. The experts working on the dye problem had expended a good deal of valuable energy in worry and had grown a few gray hairs in their heads over the failure of leggin dyes when they discovered the true cause of the fading. The men were deliberately bleaching out their leggins, usually by using salt solutions on them, since anything but a faded leggin indicated that the soldier who wore it was a rookie and a greenhorn.
The materials which went into the manufacture of clothing came from various sections of the country, since the several garment industries had grown up around centers. For instance, the melton cloth came generally from the Boston district. Linings were supplied from Atlanta, buttons from Philadelphia, and duck from Chicago. This geographic distribution of supplies simplified the Government's problem of supplying materials to the various contractors. It was possible to supply materials on short notice to any garment-making district.
At one time Chicago wired that unless 500,000 yards of flannel shirting were supplied immediately hundreds of shirt factories in Chicago and the Chicago district would have to close down. Accordingly, a special freight train was loaded with shirting in the East and started for Chicago on a special movement in charge of a "live tracer"—that is, an officer who saw that the train was put through to its destination. The train arrived in Chicago on the second day after the order was received, so rapidly had the goods been procured and loaded.
In addition to the regular uniforms for the men, almost half a million articles of clothing for officers were also bought by the Government.