The total value of the articles manufactured by the Philadelphia Quartermaster Depot during the war was $26,230,000. The garment factory at Philadelphia was started in June, 1918, and in five months it turned out 751,883 garments and 45,578 flags of various kinds. It was working toward an output of 12,000 pairs of trousers and 6,000 woolen coats per day. There were 3,000 employees in the shop and 2,000 outside seamstresses. The outside seamstresses made denim jumpers and trousers, white clothing, and olive drab shirts, the production of shirts alone reaching a total of 1,359,801 garments.
The Philadelphia factory attained an output of 5,000 pairs of chevrons per day, most of them embroidered by hand or by machinery. Before the war the Philadelphia factory had a maximum capacity of 68 pyramidal tents per day. This output was raised to 300 per day.
The Jeffersonville uniform factory was established in February, 1918. Jeffersonville is just a few minutes' ride from Louisville, Ky., which is a clothing center, and therefore there was little trouble in securing experienced workers. The factory was operated day and night with two shifts, each working eight hours. The plant reached a capacity of 750 woolen coats and 1,500 pairs of woolen trousers per day. The salaries of the women employees ranged from $50 to $80 per month. The Government established at Jeffersonville one of the most modern woolen cloth shrinking plants in the United States, costing approximately $50,000 and providing a capacity for sponging 10,000 yards of cloth per day. The Army supply officers pronounced the uniforms turned out at Jeffersonville to be the best and most honestly made clothing delivered to the Army during the war, yet the cost of manufacturing uniforms in this plant was at least 25 per cent under the average price paid to private contractors. The average cost of making a woolen service coat at Jeffersonville was $1.02, and the average cost of making a pair of woolen trousers was 54 cents.
The shirt factory at Jeffersonville was that depot's largest manufacturing enterprise. The Jeffersonville depot had been making army shirts since 1872. The shirt factory greatly expanded during the Spanish-American War, until it was employing nearly 2,000 operatives, mostly home workers. Thereafter the depot continued to make shirts at the rate of about 200,000 per year until the United States declared war against Germany, and in that time it had accumulated a roll of 2,000 sewing operatives who had worked for the factory at one time or other.
A PAIR OF ARMY SHOES BEFORE AND AFTER BEING SALVAGED AT JEFFERSONVILLE QUARTERMASTER DEPOT.
TWO VIEWS OF THE RESCO SHOE-FITTING MACHINE.
SHOE-FITTING MACHINE WITH PLUNGER AND WINGS OPEN.