The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-26
GUN MAKING IN
 UNITED STATES Evolution in Firearms During
 Past Century MORE GUNS NOW THAN EVER History of Long Tom,' the. Most Famous Cannon In Uncle Sams
 Famous Collection of
 Firearms.
MORE GUNS NOW THAN EVER
BY FREDERIC J. HAsKIN.

BY FREDERIC J. HAskIN.
 Despite the fact that the United States is ever a pilgrim to that mystical shrine at The Hague, and that the jovial Sec retary of Peace is ever bearing the olive branch to jealous nations. the great gun factories of the nation are not still, and the universal practice of preparing for war in time of peace is not being ne glected. Before he left for the orient Secretary Taft commissioned the chief of artillery to draft bill which will be sent to the White House and will doubt less be the basis for special message to Congress. This bill will provide for the transfer of the coast artillery from the war to the navy department and make it more effective branch of the service A regiment of siege artillery is to be shortly organized and with the transfer of the five and seven-inch. siege guns from Fort Riley the entire field artillery of this country was left sup piled with three-nch guns New siege guns of the latest Krupp pattern will be ready for use in a few months.
 The making of arms is an old art in America, where necessity was ever the mother of invention. When Great Britain in 1774 prohibited the exportation of arms to her growing colonies she was informed that it did not matter as there were gun makers enough on this side to make 100, GOO stands of arm a year if necessary. The following year Further inquiry de- veloped the fact that nearly all the colo nies were making brass cannon. When war was declared every gunsmith was made exempt from military duty and or dered to manufacture arms. By 1776 the industry had become a great one. A Reading furnace bored iron nine-inch guns at the rate of one a day. At the battle of Germantown Washington car ried d pair of rifed. fnt-lock pistols 12 inches long that had been forged by gunsmith of Charlottesville, N. C.
 Cannon founders seem to have known their business pretty we'll in those days. In 17SS when Philadelphia was giving a big celebration in honor of the ratiflca- ton of the constitution of the United States a procession of floats was a fea- ture of the day. On one of these floats rode Daniel King with a furnace in full blast, and in the presence of the astonished populace he finished d three iueh howitzer and when bis float turned on Union Green the gun was mounted and discharged As early as TAO the gunsmiths of Albany, N. T., were turning out a pretty good musket for Indian trade, much to the discomfort of the French of the valley. Eight years later Hugh Orr, Scotchman living in New England, completed 800 stands of arms for the province of Massachusetts Bay, casting them solid and boring them out, the first time this method was employed in this country. The British took these guns away with them over 20 years later when they evacuated Boston,
 When the new country began looking about for a good situation for an arsenal, Springfield, in Western Massachusetts was chosen, having proved convenient as a recruiting station and as place for manufacturing and repairing arms in the earlier years. In ITS the government opened works there and it was made the permanent site of one of the national armories they had planned. the other being located at Harper's Ferry To Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin, is due the first important improvement in the manufacture of American fro arus. In 179S he contracted to make l0,- 900 stands of muskets, the time allowed being a little over two years. He was to receive $l3 40 for each of them. He bent hls genius toward the improvement of the gunsmiths art and introduced so many excellent innovations in buildings, . fhaN have become the foundations for the process now in use in government works.
 If was the versatile Jefferson who studied fire arms and caused uniformity of pattern to be introduced When in France in 17S5 he saw the advantage of having the corresponding parts of all guns alike so that the part of one could be used on any other in the same magazine, and the assembling of each gun in fac tory would be easier. It was long time before this could be brought about, and for many years there was a wide diversity in the pattern of American fire arms Arms of English. Spanish and French as we'll as American make were in use. and Brown Bosses" with bar rels eight feet long, went out with the pioneers over the Cumberland and Wilder nes roads and loaded with home-moulded bullets won Kings mountain and many frontier struggle.
 The war of 1872 gave another impetus to gun making and at FoXalls foundry in Washington were cast the great iron cannon for Perry's battleships, to De hauled overland to Lake Erie by patient oxen. The civil war armament offered little improvement over that of 1912, though percussion caps had come into nea and hreech loaders were finding favor. Inventive genius was called into use and n. machine gun of practical value but of no general use was offered the northern army. The now famous gun invented by pr. Richard Gatling of North Carolina In 1861 found it's popularity after the war was over. At the end of the war the coast defenses depended on muszle loading smooth bores, with smooth bores and Parrot rifles for siege artillery. From 1850 to 1877 the Dahlgreen. solid cast iron smooth bore, using nine pounds of powder and 90 pound projectile was the standard navy gun.
 In 1883 the President decided that the antiouated equipment of the army and navy was no longer to be endured, and sent A commission abroad to study tue armament of England, France and Rus sia, AS a result of this expedition an army gun factory at Watervliet, on the Hudson, sprang into being, and the Washington navy yard was turned into a gigantic factory for naval equipment, completing the big guns now cast at Bethlehem Pa. A short while ago the new Springfield was adopted as the regu- lation rifle for the army, and immedi ately factories went to work to fill or