On September 14, 1917, W. W. Atterbury, vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, was appointed director-general of transportation of the United States Expeditionary Force in France, and was given the rank of brigadier-general. General Atterbury was already in France, and had been offering such expert advice and assistance to General Pershing as his civilian capacity would permit. With his appointment came the announcement of others, giving him the assistance of many well-known American railroad men.
When the First Division reached France it was discovered that it required four tons of tonnage to provide for each man. That meant 80,000 tons for each division, which, in the figures of the railroad man, meant eighty trains of 1,000 tons capacity for every division.
For the first 200,000 men in France, who formed the basis for the first railroad reckoning, 800 trains were necessary.
Obviously, these trains could not be taken from the already burdened French. Obviously, they could not tax further the trackage in France, though the trains and engines shipped had essential measurements to conform to the French road-beds, so that interchange was easy. Still more obviously, the trains could not be made in this country and rolled onto the decks of ships for transportation.
So that before the first soldier packed his first kit on his way to camp the A. E. F. required railway-tracks, enormous reception-wharfs, assembling-plants and factories, and arsenals and warehouses beyond number.
The only things which America could buy in France were those which could be grown there, by women and old men and children, and those which were already made. The only continuing surplus product of France was big guns, which resulted from their terrific specialization in munition-plants during the war's first three years.
To find out what could legitimately be bought in France, and to buy it, paying no more for it than could be avoided by wise purchasing, General Pershing created a General Purchasing Board in Paris late in August. This board had a general purchasing agent at its head, who was the representative of the commander-in-chief, and he acted in concert with similar boards of the other Allied armies. His further job was to co-ordinate all the efforts of subordinate purchasing agents throughout the army. The chief of each supply department and of the Red Cross and the Y. M. C. A. named purchasing agents to act under this board.
It was not long till this board was supervising the spending of many millions of dollars a month, which gives a fair estimate of what the total expenditure, both at home and abroad, had to be.
As a case in point, a single branch of this board bought in France, the first fortnight of November, 26,000 tons of tools and equipment, 4,000 tons of railway-ties, and 160 tons of cars. The cost was something over $3,000,000. These purchases alone saved the total cargo space of 20 vessels of 1,600 tons each.
The General Purchasing Board adopted the price-fixing policy created at Washington, in which it was aided by the shrewdest business heads among the British and French authorities.