The Liberty Theaters were of temporary construction, but in size compared favorably with the largest theaters in our modern cities. To provide these amusement facilities the Construction Division put up approximately 5,000,000 board feet of lumber, 9,000,000 square feet of wall board, and 40,000 square feet of roofing.
The average large city laundry was insufficient in capacity to handle the laundry work of an average of 6,000 people per day, which was the requirement to keep some 40,000 men in clean clothing. Consequently the camps and cantonments were provided with their own laundries built by the Construction Division. This put such a demand upon the manufacturers of laundry machinery that it created a shortage, and later there was a shortage of soap and powder. The 30 laundries built used up 13,000,000 board feet of lumber and 300,000 square feet of wall board.
The householder may throw his old shoes into the trash box and sell his old suit to the ragman, but the Army threw nothing away. Consequently the Construction Division was called upon to build reclamation plants at many stations. Usually one large plant was built at a center convenient to several camps, and to this center were sent the worn-out uniforms, shoes, leggins, and all other equipment.
Every camp of considerable size in the United States was provided with model bakeries. The total capacity of all the baking equipment installed by the Construction Division would turn out 1,000 tons of bread per day. This is a total of 2,000,000 loaves of 1 pound each. Each camp bakery oven would take care of 4,500 men per day in two 8-hour shifts, or it could bake 5,000 loaves in 24 hours.
There were required at all the camps and cantonments numerous storehouses for materials to be used immediately by the troops. The Construction Division built 789 of these small storehouses at the National Army cantonments alone.
The question of cold-storage facilities for the camps offered a knotty problem. Certain camps generally relied upon cold-storage space obtained near by, or else upon refrigerator cars iced in the vicinity, but in the other camps it was necessary to build special refrigeration plants. These had an ice-making capacity ranging from 6 to 35 tons daily. The ice consumption of the American soldiers in the United States proved to be 2¾ pounds per man per day.
The kitchens in the camps and hospitals would be paradise to any woman who had drudged with old-fashioned methods and equipment in cooking. As far as possible the Army's housekeeping was done by machinery. The bread slicer in common use would cut 200 slices of bread per minute and stack the slices automatically, the loaves feeding automatically into the slicer. The meat choppers would cut up 20 pounds of meat or vegetables in five minutes, and the electrically operated potato peeler would peel 40 pounds of potatoes in three minutes. The meat slicers would cut meat at the rate of 40 slices to the minute. Vegetables were cooked and meats roasted by high-pressure steam. The vegetable cooker could turn out 35 gallons of cooked product in 15 minutes. The dish-washing machines could wash, dry, and sterilize 10,000 dishes per hour. At the hospitals the food was taken from the central kitchen to the outlying wards in mobile fireless cookers, designed to keep the food hot until served.
To prepare food for 45,000 men, 350 kitchens were required by each cantonment. The National Army in training used 9,000 hotel ranges.
In most of the cantonments, particularly those in the South, the heating of quarters in winter was accomplished by means of room heaters and cannon stoves. The constructors installed 75,000 of these. The officers' quarters everywhere and four entire cantonments in the North—Devens in Massachusetts, Grant in Illinois, Custer in Michigan, and Dodge in Iowa—were heated by steam either from central heating plants or by means of ordinary boilers such as are used in residences. The total surface of the steam radiators installed would make five gigantic stoves 300 feet square and as high as the Woolworth Building in New York.
Besides the camps and cantonments used by the line troops, the Construction Division also built various special camps required by the mobilization, training, and transportation of the Army. These included the quartermaster training camp at Jacksonville, Fla., accommodating approximately 35,000 men; and the camps for the Engineering Corps, camps for heavy and light artillery training schools, and for other special units.