Armaments industry

“ The consequent estimation of the duties of the German armament industry lies mainly in the military-political sphere. It is impossible for this industry to satisfy, militarily and economically, the growing demands made of it by limiting the deliveries to our Armed Forces. ”

“ Periodic inspection could reasonably be regarded as a check against very big scale production beyond the normal scope of industry, for such weapons as rifles, machine-guns, field and heavy guns. If we consider the most important new mechanical war appliance, the tank, we find it no exception to the above remarks. Without projectors, that is, machine-guns, rifles, etc., it merely becomes a means of conveying troops and material from one place to another. ”

“ When America entered the war, problems and needs rose up at every hand, like dragons springing from the ground, and all of them, in all their number and complexity and variety, had to be met and conquered at the same time. None of them was more difficult than this problem of the creation of a munitions industry, for it demanded a highly specialized manufacturing equipment of enormous capacity and great variety which we did not have, concerning which we had in the past known but little and for which we had always had slight regard. ”

“ Like many of the other war implements produced by the Ordnance Department for use in France, the weapons employed in fighting from the trenches were entirely novel to American industry; and in the production of them we find the same story of the difficulties in the adoption of foreign designs, of the development of our own designs, of the delays encountered and mistakes made in equipping a new industry from the ground up, but, finally, of the triumphant arrival at quantity production in a marvelously brief time, considering the obstacles which had to be overcome. ”

“ Coal, iron, engineering companies and shipbuilding companies are bracketed together because so many of them are concerned in at least two of those fields of industry. As our table shows, they have had a great revival, many having been used by the Government, while all have felt the effect of the great demand for munitions. ”

“ And in addition to all these were the base repair shops in France, which were erected on a scale to employ a force three times as large as the combined organizations of all the manufacturing arsenals of the United States in time of peace, having a capacity for relining 1,000 cannon and overhauling and repairing 2,000 motor vehicles, 7,000 machine guns, 50,000 rifles, and 2,000 pistols every month. This equipment of artillery and its maintenance organization implies the flow from American industry of enormous quantities of repair parts and spare parts to keep the artillery in good condition. ”

“ The development of the armament industry by the use of foreign markets was a program encouraged by the navy, so that this industry would be able to supply the requirements of the navy in case of need. ”

“ If you analyze the process of manufacture and the details of transportation involved in the creating and bringing of each one of the new heavy field guns to the front, you arrive at an understanding of the important part played in the war by the French industrial organizations.
A wonderful production of shells I was witness to another phase of the effectiveness of this organization, as shown in the munition industry in France. Taking the number of units produced daily as a standard, the greatest single business of the war is the making of shells. ”

“ No reserves may be formed, and all existing armaments, guns, and stores above the limit fixed must be handed over to the Allies for disposal. No poisonous gas or liquid fire shall be manufactured or imported, nor any tanks nor armoured cars. The Germans are obliged to notify to the Allies for approval the names and situation of all factories manufacturing munitions, together with particulars of their output. The German Government arsenals are to be suppressed and their personnel dismissed. Munitions for use in fortified works will be limited to 1500 rounds apiece for guns of 10·5 cm. ”

“ SAUCKEL: Workers were brought to Germany for employment in the armament industry. The armament industry is a very wide term, and is not identical with the manufacture of arms and munitions. The armament industry includes all products—from matches to cannons—that have anything to do with supply for the army. ”

“ It includes a much wider sphere of activity. There were no basic principles set down for our concept of “armaments.” The characteristic of an armament factory was that as an intermediary authority, the Armament Inspectorate took care of it and watched over it. In Germany, for instance, the entire production of raw steel belonged to armament; all rolling mills, foundries and forges; the production or the manufacture of aluminum and modern synthetic materials; the chemical production of nitrogen or fuel or synthetic rubber; the production of synthetic wool ”

“ Article 115 The manufacture of arms, munitions and war material shall only be carried on in one single factory, which shall be controlled by and belong to the State, and whose output shall be strictly limited to the manufacture of such arms, munitions and war material as is necessary for the military forces and armaments referred to in Articles 104, 107, 113 and 114. The Principal Allied and Associated Powers may, however, authorise such manufacture, for such a period as they may think fit, in one or more other factories to be approved by the Commission of Control referred to in Article 137. ”

“ The skill and industry of our ordnance officers and inventors have, it is believed, overcome the mechanical obstacles which have heretofore delayed the armament of our coasts, and this great national undertaking upon which we have entered may now proceed as rapidly as Congress shall determine. With a supply of finished guns of large caliber already on hand, to which additions should now rapidly follow, the wisdom of providing carriages and emplacements for their mount can not be too strongly urged. ”

“ These years will forever stand as the monument to the American genius of workshop and factory, which in this period insured the victory by insuring the timely arrival of the overwhelming force of America's resources in the form of America's munitions. ”

“ Article 168 demands the limitation of munitions production to factories or works approved by the Allied and Associated Governments. "All other establishments for the manufacture of any war material whatever shall be closed down." ”

“ Engineer, signal and medical equipment still continued to have a value, but if the race for militarism is maintained it is hard to see how the quantities of war munitions can fail to escape the scrap heap in a few years' time. ”

“ The vastly expensive armaments of the present—the rifled breech-loader, the magazine rifle, the machine guns, the long-range field-guns, and so forth, are all accepted and paid for by the respective nations in the frank and naked expectation that these weapons will perform increased execution on the enemy in war time. ”

“ The building of these vessels and guns has given an impetus to the steel industry in our country and has been the means of giving employment and experience to our mechanics, which almost alone repays for the outlay in money.
Building ships and guns in our own country, and of our own metal, and with our own workmen, increases our resources just so much, and adds just so much to our war strength; and adds just so much, too, to the interest the people of the country take in their defenses, in their navy. The employment affects thousands of families ”

“ The allies could deliver the artillery, artillery ammunition, and airplanes if America could deliver the raw and semifinished materials. America answered that she could and would produce and transport to Europe raw materials and semifinished products in amounts equivalent to the amounts consumed by allied factories in manufacturing the completed guns, shell, and airplanes. ”

“ That which suggests itself to him as the most feasible way for securing a provision of heavy ordnance is, for the Government to make arrangements for obtaining a supply of tempered steel from private industries, and provide for the fabrication of the guns—that is, for the machining and assembling of the parts, and the sighting of the guns—in its own factories, of which there should be two, one for the army and one for the navy. ”

“ They did not realize that before you can bring about any substantial increase of production in respect to shell, or fuses, or rifles, or machine-guns, or howitzers, you have to provide the machinery with which the particular form of war material is to be manufactured, and that you probably have to fashion some extensive structure to house that machinery in. ”

“ After these plans shall have been adopted by the several {121} Governments, the limits of armaments therein fixed shall not be exceeded without the concurrence of the Council.
The Members of the League agree that the manufacture by private enterprise of munitions and implements of war is open to grave objections. ”

“ It is not merely that over 4,500 firms, not one of which before the war even dreamed of making munitions, are now engaged on nothing else, or that we have erected over 100 colossal government factories for turning out shells, guns, powder, and the implements of trench warfare ”

“ Upward of 16,000 contracts were quickly placed that required the working up into missiles of death of thousands of tons of raw material by hundreds of thousands of workmen. When the armistice was signed there were in the United States nearly 8,000 manufacturing plants employing 4,000,000 persons engaged in the making of ordnance. Manufacturing concerns of every imaginable sort converted their plants to the production of [Pg 36] the direct materials of warfare for the use of our fighting men. ”

“ The reports from the Ordnance and Mining Bureaus are very gratifying, and the extension of our means of supply of arms and munitions of war from our home resources has been such as to insure our ability soon to become mainly, if not entirely, independent of supplies from foreign countries. The establishments for the casting of guns and projectiles, for the manufacture of small arms and of gunpowder, for the supply of niter from artificial niter beds, and mining operations generally, have been so distributed through the country as to place our resources beyond the reach of partial disasters. ”

“ My co-workers agree unanimously that between 40 and 20 percent of our armament program was concerned with the production of weapons, armored cars, planes, warships, or the general equipment which the various branches of the Armed Forces required. The bulk of the material, therefore, was not armament in the sense of the Geneva Convention. The reason for the expansion of the concept of “armament” in Germany was, besides manufacturing reasons, the preferential treatment which applied to these industries, a treatment which resulted in numerous industries clamoring to be called armament industries. ”

“ Our dependence upon France for artillery, aviation, and tanks was, of course, due to the fact that our industries had not been exclusively devoted to military production. All credit is due our own manufacturers for their efforts to meet our requirements, as at the time the armistice was signed we were able to look forward to the early supply of practically all our necessities from our own factories. ”

“ Our demands on the industries concerned with the manufacture of munitions of war in this country have naturally been very great, and have necessitated that they and other ancillary trades should work at the highest possible pressure. ”

“ One of the very first Acts to provide for placing educational production of munitions of war stipulated that initial orders placed with any person, firm, or corporation for supplying such munitions, accessories, or parts, could include a complete set of such gages, dies, jigs, tools, fixtures, and other special aids and appliances, including drawings as needed for the production of munitions in quantity in the event of emergency. ”

“ More small shell is now made in a fortnight than formerly in a year, and the increase in output of heavy shell has been still larger. Equally striking results have been attained in [pg 110] the production of machine guns, aeroplanes motor bodies, and the other war supplies, for which demand and replacement have necessarily grown with the demand for guns and shells. To these have to be added the ships and the anti-submarine and anti-aircraft machines and devices that have been demanded by the enemy's method of warfare. ”

“ All arms, ammunition and implements of war and all specialized facilities for their production shall be held at the disposal of the Allies or destroyed. The maintenance and production of all aircraft and all arms. ammunition and implements of war shall be prevented. ”

“ And everywhere the officials of the Ministry of Munitions find private employers holding back workers and machinery from munition works, intriguing--more particularly through the Board of Trade--to have all sorts of manufactures for private profit recognised as munition work, or if that contention is too utterly absurd, then as work vitally necessary to the maintenance of British export trade and the financial position of the country. ”

“ The gun-foundry board, consisting of army and navy officers, appointed under the act of March 3, 1883, visited Europe and made full reports, advising large contracts for terms of years with American manufacturers to produce the steel necessary for heavy cannon, and recommending the establishment of one army and one navy gun factory for the fabrication of modern ordnance. ”