Evening star., 1916-08-06

At the start reliance was placed mainly
in these national factories and ex-
perienced firms and at that time they
were full Of orders
In the early stages of the conflict
more attention was paid to field guns
and their equipment than to heavy
ments for heavy shells greatly in
creased In June. 1918. we made an in
ventory Of all the available machinery
in the country, and II was evident that
demands There were. however. great
many private firms which could he
brought in to make munitions. and it
was decided to mobilize them for ma
tional service. In order to do this We
created an organization embracing the
entire country. The country was divid-
ed into districts. in each of which a
working board of management was set
up. BY means of this scheme of local
organization thousands Of firms have
been brought in. many of witch had
never seen a shell body. or a fuse, or a
grenade. or bomb before. much less
than made them. Now munition max
ing in some form or other has extended
well nigh to every considerab BILE town
indeed. to large numbers of villages.
An earnest desire to help. an adapta-
bilfty and engerness to learn have
brought into munition making the most
remarkable assortment imaginable Of
shops and factories. In one aren alone
shell bodies or the components of shells
are being made not only by engineer
ing works. but in confectionery works.
by a music-roll manufacturer. by an
infants food maker. by a candlemaker.
by a -four miller. by a tobacco mer
chant, by an advertising agent, in sew
eral breweries. by some jobma sters, by
a glazier. by siphon manufacturers.
and so on. Shells. and good shells.
have been turned out by machines and
methods which would be horrifying to
the apostles of orthodoxy
Immensity of Production.
What all this amounts to in the
aggregate you can form some concep-
tion of when tell you that calcu-
lation made three weeks ago showed
that there was being turned out week
ly by firms who a year ago had not
been engaged in munition work six
teen times many heavy shells as
were being. produced year ago by all
the national plants and private arma-
ment firms put together. OF course.
the big armament firms have been
greatly extended since then and that
figure does not apply to their present
output.
Numbers of manufa cturers who have
hitherto been engaged in producing
quite different goods have sacrificed
their business and good will in order
to take up the manufacture of muni-
tions. They have done it for the ask
ing and ungrudgingly. Many of them
will f1nd themselves at the end of the
war with a great part of their good
will jeopardized or lost.
"Coincidently with this program of
bringing in private firms it became
evident that even with their help the
output would still be Insufficient, so
the ministry of munitions proceeded
to provide large number of single
purpose factories; that is, plants
where the work could be specialized
Skilled engineers divided the work up
into a number of repetition operations
such as could be done with few
weeks training by women or un-
skilled labor. There are now in the
country fifty-three national shell fac
tories of this kind all Of which have
either been built or reconstructed by
the government. OF these thirty-eight
are under the management of the
boards previously referred to- Others
are managed for the ministry by ex-
perfenced munitions firms
lust as the output of shells, she'll
bodies. etc. had to be augmented. so
we had similarly to provide explosives
and filing factories. AS result of
this. apart from the enormous extern
sions of existing factories, nineteen
special explosive works have been
provided. This has practically doubled
the whole previous output of the coun-
try. Similarly there had to be built
fourteen filling factories. each of which
has been provided since last August.
Altogether there are now ninety ma
tional factories which have been
equipped with machinery and in most
cases built during the last twelve
months.