The Clio messenger. (Clio, Mich.) 1907-current, 1916-08-11

a naval consulting ing
IL. f. COFFIN. board has devised
plan by which the education of the in
dustries may be carried on.
But before explaining the system
Mr.. Coffin first disposed of the theory
of government plants for munitions of
war. whatever our individual views
may be upon government-owned
plants" he said "in the last equation,
no government in the world can afford
TO own all the plants for the produc-
ton of army and navy materials in
sufficient quantities to carry any army
through modern war. In the last
analysis it must be the private plants
upon which we must depend to fur
nish the materials needed"
If England, with her great and pow
erful allies in the field, has so per
cent, or as some claim even 80 per cent
of her industries working to supply the
needs of her armies, then the accuracy
of Mr.. Coffin's statement is beyond
question, and the early education of
the industrial army is fully as impor-
tant as the raising Of the fighting
army.
Educational Orders Favored.
"We must place drawings, instruc-
tons, and gauges in the hands of the
skilled workmen of the manufacturing
il in time of peace or they will never
be able to meet our needs in the mu-
nitions of war in time of emergency"
declared Mr.. Coffin. 1--WE must place
small educational orders with these
various factories, together with the
blue prints, jigs and gauges, if we are
to enable them to get such general
practical working knowledge of what
is required that in time of stress they
may be enabled to jump in quickly and
pick up the work without fatal delay.
"As an illustration of what it means
not to be prepared to handle these
things, l want to tell you that many
concerns in our country taking orders
from foreign governments = orders
placed year and a half ago-have
scarcely done anything in the way of
quantity delivery. Heavy shipments
have been made to European powers,
but the great mass of such shipments
has been of stuff which is not strictly
munitions of war in the popular con-
ception of the term, but materials like
barbed wire or other things of such
kind as we were pretty well able to
off ha1 a
come TO the production of shells and
munitions of war and rifles, many of
these concerns are way behind what
they expected they would be able TO
do. This applies also TO many Of our
arms manufacturers, whom some of
our lovely optimistic people would
say could manufacture in a week
enough arms TO supply an army. 1
know one concern in Cleveland
which took a big shell order. They
promised deliveries of something like
$500 a day at certain date. The
Job looked very easy, but it took them
four months beyond the promised
date to get even 200 shells day
through the plant.
Engineers Ready to Aid.
"There is one body of men in the
United States who have the ability
through their training and through
the fact that they have been instru-
mental in the development of all
American industries, qualified to rem
der the most efficient service to the
army and navy. / refer to our en-
gineers. The officers of the army and
navy are the equal In personnel Of
the officers of any similar positions in
the world. Many of us think they are
the superiors. They have been edu-
Gated at West Point and Annapolis.
They have lived with these problems
of naval warfare and land warfare,
and they have studied fighting and all
the rules of strategy and are masters
IN their line. But, generally speaking,
these men have not had the hard
knocks in the commercial end and in
that manufacture of goods in quantity
which will best fit them to go out and
institute a general mobilization of the
Industrial resources of this country.