The Monticellonian., 1918-09-27
MAKING GUNS FOR
 UNCLE SAWS MEN
Day and Night Forces at Work
 on Weapons for Fighters.
PRODUCTION IN YEARS TIME
Plants for Manufacture of Ordnance Have Increased More Than 90 Per Cent Since Beginning of
 the War.
(From the Committee on Public Informa-
 ton. Washington. D. O

(From the Committee on Public Informa-
 ton. Washington, D. O
 The fOundries of 16 steel plants in the United States are today doing capacity business. Throughout the night the work will go on with slight interruption. The whistles that blow to announce closing time to one army of workers will be a summons to an- other shift to take it's turn. The blast of chimneys Will continue to roar, and the glittering white-hot streams of molten metal will flow into the molds. \ year ago only two of these sixteen foundrieS where cannon forgingS are now being made were in existence. The foundries at Bethlehem and Mid vale represented almost our entire re- sources for the making of cannon forgings. Today those two plants con- stitute less than 10 per cent of our total facilities for making such prod ucts.
 In one year new industry has been created in this country. It is new not only in the sense that the II foundries
 
 of manufacture are new. Making gun forgings is different from making steel forgfngs for any other purpose. The heated steel must be pressed and not hammered. The methods of heat treating the steel, of cooling it, and of annealing the molten metal are all diff ferent. Yet, within one year, this new industry has been built up in this country. and today it provides the wherewithal for the carrying out of an artillery program the like of which has not been projected in any other country.
 Nor is that all. In more than score of other factories gun carriages. recoil mechaniSms and other parts of artil- lery are being made. For the making of those parts, new industries have likewise been created. As an instance new industry was established to manufacture glass of a quality avail able for use in telescopic sights on can non. Such glass had never been made in the United States before.
 Handicapped at Start.
 When we entered the war we were handicapped by a lack of technical knowledge. We had been peaceful people; We had not trained our scien- lists and engineers in the art of mu- nitions making. Therefore. We had but one ordnance expert for every POO in Germany. We went into this war with an ordnance bureau consisting of 97 officers and S20 enlisted men. Not all of those 97 officers were ordnance experts. Some of them were only on detail to the ordnance department. In fact, not more than eight of them were charged with the designing work in the manufacture of artillery. Be fore year had elapsed, the ordnance department had grown into an organi- zation of 5000 officers, 30,000 enlisted men and 10000 civilian employees. It has undergone thorough reShap- ing to adapt itself to the extraordinary new conditions. The ordnance bu- reau in the first part of the war did total business of $4,700,000.000. In peace times its average annual ex- penditures were S14,000,000.
 Large as these figures seem, astound ing as this rate of expansion must ap- pear. they give only scant idea of the difficulties faced by the ordnance department in its year of preparatory work. Ordnance is a highly technical subject. The few who knew it thor ougbly have had the double task of furnishing ideas and perfecting de- signs and of imparting their knowl- edge to others. They had to be work CTS and teachers in the same day. The old ordnance department of less than 100 officers was split up into a gun-carriage division, cannon diyi- sion, small-arms division. and so on, each division being charged with the design and production of some part of ordnance material. Manufacture of ordnance material was carried on al- most entirely in government arsenals. The problem of production was not difficult A few officers could follow a gun through from the day that it was first sketehed out on paper until it wa. turned over to a field artillery regi- ment. But when the ordnance depart ment was called upon to put through program involving expenditures and contracts totaling more than $4.500,- COG, 900 in single year, the old way of doing business had to end and the old form of organization had to be aban- doned.
 Organized the Forces.
 To meet the new problem. most Of the ordnance experts-the regular army offieers--were assembled in wha' is known as the engineering bureau of the ordnance department, and to this bureau was given the task of design. ing ordnance material. How much de- signing work there is to be done in the ordnance department is suggested by the fact that 10000 blue prints q day are turned out in Washington for the information of manufacturers of ordnance material.
 The next big task of the ordnance department, after designing the ma terial, was to place contracts and pur- chase orders. It was extremely diffi- cult to find plants where ordnance ma terial could be made, and in great many cases it was necessary to have factories built. or to have them equip ped throughout with new machinery and tools. Sometimes the ordnance de- pertinent could not find anything more to begin with than group of men who knew manufacturing methods. It n I tA -&nl- fhn