The Dolores star., 1918-10-11
MAKING GUNS FOR
UNCLE SANS MEN
Day and Night Forces at Work
on Weapons for Fighters.
PRODUCTION IN YEARS TIME
Plants for Manufacture of Ordnance
Have increased More Than so Per
Gent Since Beginning of
the War.

the War.
from the Committee on Public Informal
ton, Washington, D. c.
The fuundries of l6 steel plants in
the United States are today doing
capacity business. Throughout the
night the work will 20 on with slight
interruption. The whistles that blow
to announce closing time to one army
d workers will be a summons to an
other shift to take its turn. The blast
Of chimneys will continue to roar, and
the gittering white-hot streams Of
molten metal will flow into the moIdS.
A year ago only two of these sixteen
toundries where cannon forgings are
now being made were in existence.
The fOundTics mt Bethlehem and Mid
vale represented almost our entire re-
sources for the making OF cannon
forgings. To-Day those two giants con
stitute less than 10 per cent of our
total facilities for making such prod
uCts
in one year a new industry has been
created in this country. 1t is new not
only in the sense that the II foundries
have been built, but that the processes
of manufacture are new. Making
gun Iurgings is different from making
steel fUr@iugs 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 al diff
terent. 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 q score
of other factories gun carriages. recou
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 quality avail
able for use in telescope 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 n lack of technical
knowledge. We had been q 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 200
IN Germany. We went into this war
with an ordnance bureau consisting of
81 officers and $40 enlisted men. Not
all of those 81 officers were ordnance
experts. Some of them we're 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-
cation of 5000 officers, 10000 enlisted
men and 10000 civilian employees.
1t 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 a
total business of S4T000O00O0. In
peace times its average annual ex-
penditures were $14,000,OO0.
Large as these figures seem, astound-
ing as this rate of expansion must ap-
pear, they give only a scant idea of
the difficulties faced by the ordnance
department in its year of preparatory
work. Ordnance is highly technical
ubject. The few who knew it thor
oughly 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
ers and teachers in the same day.
The old ordnance department of less
than 100 officers was split up into a
gun-carriage division, cannon divi-
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 q
gun through from the day that it was
first sketched out on paper until it was
turned over to field artillery regi-
ment. But when the ordnance depart
ment was called upon to put through
program involving expenditures and
contracts tJtaling more than S4,JOO,-
100000 in Il single year, the old way of
doing business had to end and the old
form of organization had to be aoan-
doned.
Organized the Forces.
To meet the new problem, most of
the ordnance experts-the regular
army officers-were assembled in what
is known as the engineering bureau of
the ordnance department, and 20 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 St
day are turned out in Washington
for the information of manufacturers
of ordnance material.