The unexampled conditions created by the war with Canada, of which the foregoing is a survey—her activities, turmoil, welding of political cleavages, industrial sacrifices, benevolences, and needless precautions against unsubstantial dangers—merely featured her real achievement. This was the creation of an army in being for the European battle field.
PART IV—CANADIAN WAR INDUSTRIES
CHAPTER XXII
BEHIND THE GUNS AT HOME
When the war broke out in 1914, Great Britain looked to Canada for a supply of munitions as well as men. Not a shell, cartridge, nor fuse had ever before been made by a Canadian manufacturer. A new industry immediately sprang into being, assuming quite large proportions by the middle of 1915, by which time there were approximately over 400 establishments in full blast. From a modest output in 1914 representing a value of $28,164, the Canadian munitions factories piled up a record of production which stood at over $1,000,000,000 in value with the war's close in November, 1918.
The Imperial Ministry of Munitions, which threw out its lines from London to obtain munitions whence it could, asked much of Canada and got much. "Who would have dreamed," said a member of the British Government in 1915, "that Canada would have produced more munitions than any country in the world except Germany prior to the war?" Of the projectiles used by all the British armies in the third year of the war, Canada was producing 55 per cent of the shrapnel shells; 42 per cent of the 4.5-inch shells; 27 per cent of the 6-inch; 15 per cent of the 8-inch; and 16 per cent of the 9.2-inch. In fact, when the Germans complained that the Allied armies were being munitioned by the United States, they lost sight—or did not know—of the fact that many of the shells they objected to as American really came from Canada. In addition to shells and fuses and related products, there were vast exports of explosives and chemicals, metals, and spruce and fir for airships and other purposes. The war contracts which started all this activity were spread over a thousand contractors and called for the employment of from 200,000 to 300,000 workers.
The table of achievement, as it stands in the Government records, was as under
VALUE OF MUNITIONS AND MATERIALS EXPORTED FROM CANADA
| 1914 | to December 31 | $ | 28,164 |
| 1915 | " | 57,213,688 | |
| 1916 | " | 296,505,257 | |
| 1917 | " | 388,213,553 | |
| 1918 | " | 260,711,751 | |
| ——————— | |||
| $1,002,672,413 | |||
QUANTITIES EXPORTED