At one time the German armies were exploding 120,000 shells a day in France and Belgium. The response from the French alone was 80,000 shells a day, and General Joffre made a request that his supply be put up to 100,000 per day. This is for shells of all sizes, and the estimate to me was of an average cost of two pounds, or ten dollars, per shell. Some of the big German shells cost as high as $500 each. In some kinds of shrapnel, holding 300 bullets, there are more than thirty pieces of mechanism.
Within forty-eight hours after England declared war she had engaged the total output of an American manufacturer, whose machinery was an important part of the shell-making business. An American factory in Connecticut received orders for $25,000,000 worth of cartridges which would mean, at five cents a cartridge, 500,000,000 rounds of ammunition. I know of a single order to America from England for 10,000,000 horseshoes.
Through a single agency in America more than $150,000,000 worth of war-supplies was placed several weeks ago. I do not know whether this included a single order, of which I have knowledge, for 3,000,000 American rifles, delivered over three years at $30 a rifle, or $90,000,000. The company receiving this order had to work so quickly to install new machinery that old buildings were dynamited to clear the land.
Such orders to America are bound to tell upon our exports, and, combined with the advance in food-stuffs, the loss in cotton values by the outbreak of the war is offset more than twice over.
America must feel the effect of these orders when the goods go forward in increasing quantities. They are paid for as promptly as shipped. Many an American factory has been put on three eight-hour shifts for the day's work on these orders.
A Southern manufacturer received an order for 5000 dozen pairs of socks to be shipped weekly for six months. The price was under $1.00 per dozen, with ten per cent of wool in them. He complained that he was making only twenty cents per dozen profit, while if he had not been so anxious for the order, he might just as well have got a price that would have shown more than twice this profit.
In boots and shoes, England, instead of giving orders to this country, has been buying leather in America, and filling all her own factories. It is the policy of England to fill every workshop in her tight little island before she permits business to overflow.
To-day there are no unemployed in Great Britain, except in the cotton districts dependent upon German trade. Wage advances and overtime are the rule rather than the exception. The one country that the warring world must turn to for supplies is the United States, and that in increasing measure. Orders for $300,000,000 of war goods already received must be duplicated several times.
Every American automobile manufacturer able to deliver motor-trucks in lots of one hundred, has received his orders for shipments to the Allies.
Germany has now no base from which to get many important supplies. In a long contest the Allies will supply motor-cars, shells, guns, and ammunition to a far greater extent than Germany can manufacture them. Factories for this work are expanding in both Russia and America. The English do not speak against the Germans as a people. They believe them seriously misled by Prussian militarism, which they declare must be crushed absolutely.