From the mills the powder is shipped to the bag-loading plants in bulk. The silken bags are manufactured in huge quantities by industrial plants and forwarded to the bag-loading plants, where are also daily received large quantities of metal and fiber containers, into which are loaded bags packed for overseas shipment not to be unpacked again until they have reached the battle field.
Filling the bags is a precise and delicate operation. Chances can not be taken or averages struck. Errors may mean the possible loss of battles. A battery commander who has figured his range and who is about to drop a number of high-explosive shell on an enemy battery must know exactly how much powder he has behind his charge. If more powder is in the bag than he calculates on, he will overshoot his mark; if less, the shell instead of dropping upon an enemy battery may explode in midst of his own advancing troops.
The three bag-loading plants the Government constructed at Woodbury, Tullytown, and Seven Pines were built to load bags that were to be used in firing guns from 155-millimeter caliber up to a caliber of 10 inches. The estimated average capacity of each plant was 20,000 bags a day, but as a matter of fact a maximum capacity of 40,000 bags a day at each plant had been reached before the signing of the armistice. Two shifts a day were used at these plants most of the time. In each shift there were approximately 3,500 operatives, most of them women.
At each of these plants, which are located in comparatively isolated points, because of the dangerous work, special housing facilities had to be constructed. For example, at Tullytown there were 70 bungalows, 13 residences for officers and executive heads, and six 98-room dormitories, while at Woodbury 19 great dormitories were built to house workers.
The number of buildings at Tullytown is 215. They range from guardhouses to electrical generating stations for power and light. Besides this construction there are between 22 and 30 miles of railroad track laid at each of these points. The extremely dangerous nature of the work makes it necessary to store not more than 400,000 pounds of explosives in a single building, and where powder is stored the buildings are at least 350 feet apart.
Up to the time of the signing of the armistice there were loaded into small-arms ammunition 19,741,500 pounds of powder; there were assembled into fixed ammunition approximately 33,000,000 pounds of smokeless powder; and there were assembled into bags, properly packed for shipment, approximately 32,300,000 pounds of smokeless powder.
HIGH EXPLOSIVES.
When Europe was plunged into the great war in August, 1914, the American production of trinitrotoluol for commercial purposes amounted to approximately 600,000 pounds a month of varying grades of purity. This quantity was almost entirely consumed in the making of explosives for blasting purposes. When we entered the war this production had been increased to 1,000,000 pounds a month, exclusive of that which was being used here commercially. Under pressure of our own war-time needs the production of this highly important explosive chemical had been run up to 16,000,000 pounds a month at the termination of hostilities in November, 1918.
During the early stages of the war the average price of T. N. T. for military purposes was $1 a pound. Largely, however, because of the tremendous quantity production and enormous economies effected by reason of this, and despite the scarcity of raw materials, and notwithstanding the greatly increased labor cost, this price had been reduced at the time of the signing of the armistice to 26½ cents a pound. There were in the course of erection at the time of the armistice, two great Government T. N. T. plants—one at Racine, Wis., that was to have a capacity of 4,000,000 pounds a month, and one at Giant, Cal., with a capacity of 2,000,000 pounds a month.
During the war three grades of T. N. T. were produced. Grade I was used for booster charges—that is, those charges which initiated the explosive wave in the main shell charge. Grade II was used as a shell filler; while Grade III was utilized with ammonium nitrate in producing amatol.