Arms industry

“ 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. ”

“ Complete as we have shown the organization of the Arsenal to be, both as regards its mechanical resources and its staff, it is generally understood that the Government do not intend to depend upon it wholly for the supply of the munitions of war. In the case of small-arms, its powers, as we have seen, are wholly inadequate to the task. In those branches, however, where the manufacturing power is ample, they will not attempt to push it to the point of excluding the private manufacturer from a share in the business. ”

“ It always has been true, and always will be, that the manufactured products for which there is an extensive demand are the articles which invention will improve upon until they arrive as near perfection as it is possible for the work of human hands to be. Such was the case with the materials of warfare. Invention was stimulated in various directions, but its products appeared most numerous, perhaps, in the changes which the arms, ammunition, and ordnance underwent in their better adaptation to the needs of the hour. ”

“ Today thousands of England's industrial plants are being operated as government factories for the production of war materials, and many other thousands of plants, still under private control, are centering their energies in this same direction.
"We have here in the United States vast resources in manufacturing and producing equipment, but they are unorganized and uneducated for the national service. Our observations of the European War have taught us that it is upon organized industry that we must base every plan of military defense. ”

“ Included in the arsenal and ordnance-depot are a gun-repair shop, equipped to reline more than 800 guns a month, a carriage-repair plant of large capacity, a motor-vehicle repair-shop, able to overhaul more than 1,200 cars a month, a small-arms repair-shop, ready to deal with 58,000 small arms and machine-guns a month, a shop for the repair of horse and infantry equipment, and a reloading-plant, capable of reloading 100,000 artillery-cartridges each day. ”

“ Its policies must be subject to the administration's general strategy in the war—for instance, to the amount of munitions in comparison with the number of men or the amount of food that it wishes to send abroad at any given time. The munitions program and the conversion of industry to war purposes must be governed by the ultimate end in view. In addition, one of the great factors in production—the labor factor—is being administered by another government agency, and it is obvious that priority in the labor supply must go hand in hand with priority in materials. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The capacity of engineering firms was increasingly absorbed by munitions work. Production of industrial machinery fell, and such goods as motor cars, [20] vacuum cleaners and refrigerators were among the first consumer goods to disappear. In fact, during the first nine months of war, the expansion of munitions work took place largely at the expense of the home and export trades of the engineering industry; [21] by June 1940 most sections of the engineering industry had only about twenty percent of their workers employed, on the home trade. ”

“ The volumes which are now nearing completion will deal with the supply and control of raw materials, with the supply and utilisation of labour in the munitions industry, with the provision of factories, plant and machine tools, with the administrative machinery of the supply departments, with the finance of war production and with overseas supplies. There may also be a composite volume dealing with the design and development of weapons. It was also part of the original plan to introduce the series by a ‘synoptic’ volume covering the entire field of war production. ”

“ It was not until the Government of Britain, representing the Community, invited Capital, Management, and Labor to meet in common, and policies were arrived at as the result of Round Table Conference, that the necessary adjustments of industry were so arranged as to make possible the vast production of munitions required to win the War. What was necessary to the winning of the War is equally necessary to the winning of Peace — which we can hardly say exists so long as international strife gives way only to industrial unrest. ”

“ World Armaments and the Growth of the 'Arms Culture' 31. Traditionally, nations have adhered to an 'arms culture' They find themselves locked into arms competitions fuelled among other things by powerful vested interests in the 'military-industrial complex' as well as in the armed forces themselves. Industrial nations account for most of the military expenditures and the production and transfer of arms in international society. However, the influence of this 'arms culture' is not confined to these nations. ”

“ The same reasons induce me to recommend the erection of a manufactory of gunpowder, to be under the direction of the Ordnance Office. The establishment of a manufactory of small arms west of the Alleghany Mountains, upon the plan proposed by the Secretary of War, will contribute to extend throughout that country the improvements which exist in establishments of a similar description in the Atlantic States, and tend to a much more economical distribution of the armament required in the western portion of our Union. ”

“ To reply that they have the big war machines because they can afford to pay for them, is no conclusive answer. The organizing of nations for war came into present-day society with the present industrial system. Industrial leaders have engaged in a great competitive struggle from which the final appeal was always the appeal to arms. Furthermore, one of the most profitable businesses has been that of making the munitions and supplies required for the prosecution of war. ”

“ We are calling upon the resources, the efficiency and the ingenuity of the American manufacturers of war material of all kinds-airplanes, tanks, guns, ships, and all the hundreds of products that go into this materiel. The Government of the United States itself manufactures few of the implements of war. Private industry will continue to be the source of most of this materiel; and private industry will have to be speeded up to produce it at the rate and efficiency called for by the needs of the times. ”

“ The Enfield manufactory, at its starting, was intended to be a moderate affair, I believe; but now it has expanded into such gigantic proportions that, if it continues in action, the manufacture of military arms must partially cease to be the trade of Birmingham: for all large establishments of machinery must be employed, to protect them from decay; and whatever may be the cost of production, machinery must go on, or be entirely given up. ”

“ ARTICLE 168.—The manufacture of arms, munitions, or any war material shall only be carried out in factories or works the locations of which shall be communicated to and approved by the Governments of the principal Allied and Associated Powers, and the number of which they retain the right to restrict. ”

“ 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 ”

“ An all-round limitation of armaments must follow the present war if the world is to be permanently relieved of the nightmare which has weighed upon it for so long. We can no longer afford to listen to arguments as to the impracticability of such a course from those whose claims to the possession of human wisdom and experienced guidance have so utterly broken down.
Armament industry rests in government demand, and creates an economic force interested in war preparedness. ”

“ After the officers of artillery are promoted to the rank of second captain, but not before, they are detached from their regiments and successively sent into the various arsenals, cannon foundries, powder mills, and small arm manufactories, pyrotechnic establishments, and workshops, in order that they may become practically acquainted with the whole of the processes connected with the manufacture and supply of artillery, rockets, small arms, powder, material of all kinds, tools, &c., and also with the construction and repair of the buildings and factories required for these purposes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The former produced 7000 cannon per annum, and the latter 13,000. An enormous firearms factory had even been improvised at Paris, which made 140,000 muskets per annum, that is to say, more than all the other factories together were capable of turning out previous to the Revolution. There was only one manufactory for side arms before the war. ”

“ To the surface guns have been added howitzers, bomb-throwers, and depth-charges for under-water action: smoke-screen fittings and chemicals form a part of their stock in trade: they issue mine-sinking rifles, and even control the supply of our zigzag clocks. The range of their work is constantly being extended. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From the very beginning the Government received the hearty cooperation of the entire industry. The need was urgent, the demand tremendous, and many manufacturers were called upon to sacrifice their own product in order to meet the needs of the Army, and many were on a 100-per-cent war-work basis. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the whole industry of a nation is mobilized behind the fighting line, it is not merely finished munitions that must be given priority in transportation, but also the materials and fuel for further munitions production. The food supply of the industrial population, as well as that of the army, has a claim to priority. So also have clothing supplies, lumber for housing, and whatever else is essential to working efficiency. In production it would be impossible to fix definite limits upon the application of the priority principle. ”