The Coconino sun., 1920-10-22

The British supplied their part, but we supplied nothing. The factory was unfinished at the armistice and never produced anything.
 Production of Explosives, Powder and Gas-The production of high ex- plosives, powder and gas was likewise humiliating failure from the view point of the results obtained. This is what we got:
 (a) We spent s6O, 100000 to build a
 powder plant at Nitro, w. Va. It
 never produced a pound of pow
 der for the war. After the arm
 istice there was stored at Nitro personal property worth, at fair
 cash value, $10,000,000. Both
 plant and property were sold af-
 ter the armistice for $8,551 900, most of which is in deferred pay
 ments.
 (b) We paid the Hercules Powder Go.
 for operating the Nitro plant,
 11,293,737.11. They produced
 no powder that we could use in
 the war.
 (c) We spent $2,9OO,O ,OOO in furnishing electrical machinery and building
 electric lines for the Virginia
 Powder company at Nitro, w.
 Va., and after we had built them at first-class system, giivng them a practical monopoly of the Ka- nawha Valley, the government settled with them for $81 900 and
 in addition gave them long time contract to furnish electric power hn v>Ia ant at
 Charleston, w. Va.
 (d) We spent approximately $90,000,-
 900 in the construction and oper- ation of powder plant at Nash vile, Tenn, called Old Hickory, and which produced no powder that could be used in the war. (e) We spent $116,194, ,947.37 on ni-
 trate plants at Sheffield, Ala;
 Muscle Shoals, Ala; Toledo,
 Ohio, and Cincinnati, Ohio. These
 plants did not produce pound
 of nitrates that could be used in
 the war.
 (f) We spent for poison gas $116,-
 100000. Not pound of Ameri-
 can gas was ever fired in an
 American shell, and only about
 100 tons of American gas load
 ed in shells, ever reached the
 field dumps.
 (g) The government built three pie
 ric plants and seven plants to
 make phenol and acid required by
 them. This was to furnish picric
 acid for the French, who desired
 it for explosives. None of these
 plants produced a pound of any
 thing that was used in the war.
 The plants cost us S35,000, ,000.
 The French were to pay the whole
 bill, but the war department set
 tied with France for S14,000, 900. Port Terminals-We spent SIT, ,116,- 900 in constructing a port terminal at Charleston, S. C., which was built in an isolated swamp 10 miles up the Cooper river, where it was necessary to dredge to reach it. There never was a pound of produce, man, or an animal shipped either out of or into this terminal during the war.
 We spent S127 ,661 900 for port ter minals at Boston, Brooklyn, Newark, Philadelphia, Norfolk, Charleston and New Orleans. Some of them were not finished and none of them were used for anything except storage during the war.
 The foregoing summarizes briefly the lconclusions reached by the select committee of the house of representa- tives on expnditures in the war de- partment after months of careful in- vestigation. The conclusions of that committee remain uncontradicted. Excessive Orders for Less Essen tial Things-No less startling than the governments failure to produce essential things such as guns, shells, gas, aeroplanes and tanks, was the mismanagement incidental to the plac- ing of excessive orders and the mak- ing of unnecessary expenditures for less essential things. A few instances verified by the records are sufficient (a) We ordered 41,100,152 pairs of
 shoes and received deliveries of
 32,227,450 pairs, for 3,513,S37
 men.
 (b) We bought and received 0,326
 double sets of harness and 11O,-
 BPS single sets. We had, in all,
 during the period of the war
 580,182 horses, of which only 67,-
 948 were shipped overseas and
 96,000 died.
 (c) We bought 945,000 s saddles and
 had, in all, 86,418 cavalry horses. (d) We bought 2,850,853 matters. (e) We bought 585,615 saddle bags. (f) We bought 1 1887 ,199 horse brush
 eS.
 (g) We bought 2,O33,204 nose bags. (h) We bought 1,148,364 horse cov-
 CTS.
 G) We bought for our ordnance
 officers 712,510 complete sets of
 spur straps, about 36 sets for
 each officer.
 (D We bought s,7S1, ,615 horseshoes. (k) We bought 195,000 branding
 irons.
 CD We ordered 149,456,611 hard
 bread cans and used 31,500,O0O
 during the war.
 (The conclusions presented here and elsewhere in this report are based upon data furnished by agencies of the federal government and upon the sworn testimony of competent wit
 Il sv %Ia Lno nrc