The Iron and Steel Institute, at the request of the Government, formed a committee to manage the production and distribution of wire rope, and from the fifteenth of May, 1917, this committee had on its shoulders the making of wire necessary to keep the country’s work going at full speed and to supply the needs for war, of whose extent or character nobody had any clear idea. Karl G. Roebling, of John A. Roebling’s Sons Co., was made chairman of the committee.
THE WAR—ONE LONG COMMITTEE MEETING
Throughout the war, the Roebling offices in Trenton were headquarters for the entire business of wire rope supply. It was one long committee meeting, with production going on at utmost intensity all the time. Here came all the orders for wire rope from the several Government departments and the bureaus in those departments, each with its long array of specifications, all requiring shipment to divers points. Much of the work required also a great labor of cutting and attaching, and fittings by the hundreds of thousands, and all, without an exception that stands out in anybody’s memory, wanted in the minimum of time.
It is the proud record of that committee that when the fighting ended in November of 1918 every order had been filled and delivery made on time. Industry has no story of accomplishment to tell that can be more creditable than this. The Roebling plants, near to the seaboard and equipped for specialization, were devoted almost wholly to the manufacture of war stuff, domestic industrial orders being transferred to inland factories.
THE RECORD OF PRODUCTION FOR WAR PURPOSES
The record of production, for war purposes alone, shows that the Roebling Company manufactured a very large percentage of the whole, which ran to unconscionable millions of feet. During the war the productive capacity of the plant was increased as much as seventy-five per cent, and the list of the employed at times ran close to ten thousand men. The numerical increase in men did not equal the growth in output. Here as well as in almost every line of industry the war furnished a revelation of the capacity of men for work. New lines of production, requiring skill, developed in common laborers, the only kind that at times could be obtained, a facility in production that before the pressure of war came to discover it would have been thought impossible.
In looking back over the war work it is plain that the service rendered by the company in manufacturing material for the Allies, prior to America’s entrance into hostilities, was of large value in familiarizing it with forms of production afterward required for our own Army and Navy. Another thing which aided in meeting a vast demand was the unremitting attention which the company had given to the perfection of aircraft material, from the first successful flight of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk in 1903. At that time study and experiment had been started in the Roebling factories looking to the production of aircraft wire and strand and cord for all the different parts involved, which should combine the utmost strength with the minimum of weight, with special reference to the stresses peculiar to aviation work.
When the hour of need came, Roebling aircraft products had reached a stage of perfection which saved a world of hurried experimentation and development. It was a demonstration in preparedness, although up to 1914 the work had been done solely to keep industrial pace with a new and important development of mechanical science.
THE GOVERNMENT ESTABLISHMENTS THAT CALLED FOR WIRE AND ROPE
It is a fairly long list of Government establishments that is shown on the Roebling records as calling for war supply of wire rope. It includes, in the Navy Department, the Bureau of Steam Engineering, Bureau of Construction and Repair, Bureau of Ordnance, the Bureau of Yards and Docks and the Naval Aircraft Factory.