OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 249
AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MOBILIZATION FOR
WAR, 1917-1918
By H. A. DE WEERD
Admiral A. T. Mahan once described his
fellow Americans as being
"aggressive, combative, and
war-like", but he added, "they are the reverse
of military, being out of sympathy with
military tone and feeling."1 A
neglect of the study of military history
and economy in the United States
developed partly as a result of an ingrained
American distaste for and
suspicion of things military. The
frontier democracy in particular was
impatient with military institutions,
except, of course, when there were In-
dians to shoot or new lands to acquire.
The fear that liberty would perish
with the growth of military institutions
was commonly expressed. For
years the Congress of the United States
resisted the establishment of a
general staff on the Europeon model for
fear that its development might
not only lead to war, but to a loss of
freedom. These fears of military
institutions may seem a little unusual
in a people with such an impressive
record for military activity. It has
been pointed out that in 150 years of
history the American people have engaged
in 110 separate conflicts and
about 8,600 battles.2 The
extent of our military activity is attested by the
mere bulk of the papers for the War
Department which take up more space
in the National Archives than those of
any other department of the Gov-
ernment. Yet we have steadfastly refused
to concern ourselves with the
problems of military policy, preferring
to use the costly method of im-
provisation for each new military
crisis.3 Up to the year 1938 there was only
one notable study made of American
military problems and policy. That was
General Emory Upton's brilliant work, The
Military Policy of the United
States. Though Upton was a military thinker of equal rank with
the
greatest of nineteenth century Europe,
this study was allowed to languish in
manuscript form for twenty-one years in
the dusty files of the War De-
partment before it was
"discovered" and published by Secretary Elihu
Root in 1904.4 Such evidence of public
disinterest in American military
problems should be borne in mind when
considering the difficulties en-
countered in the attempt to mobilize the
industrial power of the United
States behind a gigantic trans-oceanic
military effort in the years 1917-
1918.
The term as well as the idea of an
industrial mobilization for war is
of relatively recent origin, although it
has now been grafted onto the peace-
economy of the totalitarian states and
has become commonplace. Such a
1 A. T. Mahan, From Sail to Steam (New York, 1907),
7.
2 W. A. Ganoe, History of the United
States Army (New York, 1932), 490.
3 Commenting on American military
policies Elihu Root wrote in 1880: "In the
conduct of war we have rejected the
practices of European nations and with little
variation have thus far pursued the
policy of China." Quoted in E. Upton, The Mili-
tary Policy of the United States (Washington, 1904), vii.
4 P. S. Michie, Life and Letters of
General Emory Upton (New York, 1885,
xxvii.
250 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL
AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
concept of war economy seems to have
been envisaged for the first time by
Dr. Walter Rathenau of Germany after the
Marne defeat in 1914 made a
long war inevitable.5 Modern
warfare with its mass armies and increased
mechanical equipment made demands on
industry little dreamed of in earlier
days. The scale of these demands may be
illustrated by the observation
that the French armies in the year 1918,
expended 100 times as many ar-
tillery shells as all German armies
fired away in the entire war of 1870-
1871.6 The complex requirements of
modern armies are illustrated by the
fact that the Ordnance Department of the
United States Army issued con-
tracts in 1918 for over 100,000
different items of military equipment. Such
tremendous demands for ammunition plus
the vast variety of other equip-
ment required for modern warfare made it
necessary to devote the whole
industrial resources of a state to their
manufacture. The difficulties en-
countered in procurement of these items
in a free competitive system of
economy, made it necessary for the
governments of all nations to set up a
system
of governmental control of industry, with fixing prices and the
allocating of raw materials and manufacturing facilities as an
essential part
of this control.
Among the primary conditions necessary
for the efficient and eco-
nomical accomplishment of military
activity under modern conditions are:
first, the existence of an agency for
the superior direction of the war with
lines of authority clearly laid out; and
second, that the equipment and
maintainence of the army forces be
simplified as much as possible by the
use of standardized military units,
weapons, uniforms, and equipment; and
third, that there should be an agency
powerful enough to coordinate in-
dustry to a war program.
Before discussing the latter, we should
inquire for a moment to what
extent our military establishment was
able to meet the first two conditions
set forth above: namely, did we have a
superior agency adequate for the
direction of the war in 1917, and were
our armed forces organized in such
a way as to enjoy the benefits of
standardized equipment?
Up to the year 1903 the superior
direction of the U. S. Army was
hampered by a curious division of
authority in military matters between
the Secretary of War, the Commanding
General, and the Adjutant-Gen-
eral. This relationship was almost
unworkable in peace-time and utterly
unworkable in war-time.7 When
set up, it was doubtless regarded as an-
other beneficial application of the
check-and-balance system which worked
so well in safeguarding our
constitutional rights. This system of divided
5 On
August 3, 1914, Rathenau advocated a department of the Kriegsamt to be
devoted to conservation and distribution
of raw materials. M. Swarte, Der Grosse Krieg
(Leipzig, 1922), I, 58;
W. Warlimont, "Industrial Mobilization in Germany," Army
Ordnance, XI (September-October, 1932), 115-23.
6 Report D-2-153, U. S. General Staff,
Statistics, Branch Files.
7 Major General G. H. Carter, The
Creation of the American General Staff,
U. S. Senate, Document, no. 119, 65
Cong., 1 Sess. p. 63; Report of the Chief of Staff,
1917 (Washington, 1918), 6.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE: PROCEEDINGS 251
authority caused so much trouble in the
Spanish-American War that
Root was able to force through Congress
the Organic Act of February
14, 1903, which abolished the office of
Commanding General, and created a
general staff corps of forty-five
officers charged with the direction of all
activities of the War Department.8 But
the early fears of the sinister ac-
tivities of a general staff on the
German model were soon revived. In
1907, Congress restored the title of
Adjutant-General, and in 1916 passed
legislation designed to restore the dual
if not triple control which had
previously existed by allowing the
Secretary of War freedom to employ
the Adjutant-General as well as the
Chief of Staff as an organ of com-
mand.9 This, Secretary of War
Newton D. Baker wisely refused to do.
Balked in this attempt to undermine the
general staff, Congress enacted leg-
islation designed to weaken it by making
it illegal for more than half of
the forty-five staff officers to be
employed in or near Washington, D. C.10
The result of this Siberian exile law
was that only twenty staff officers were
on duty in Washington when the war broke
out in 1917. Nine of these
had their whole time taken up with
routine functions, leaving eleven men
to do all the military thinking, the
strategic planning, and the coordination
of all military efforts of the U. S.11
Not until one month after war was
declared on Germany, did the Congress
provide an increase of personnel for
the General Staff. At that time a
membership of ninety-two officers was set
as the limit, although to cope with the
work of this department the services
of 1,200 staff officers and 3000
civilians were ultimately required. Because
of the poor-orphan treatment accorded
the General Staff in the years be-
fore the war, only four men on the
General Staff in 1918 had enjoyed any
previous staff experience.12 In
the eyes of European critics the American
General Staff was merely a paper
organization. Since the whole matter of
mobilizing industry to a new war program
was dependent upon the directing
brain of the General Staff, this state
of affairs exerted an incalculable
effect upon that program.
Another inevitable consequence of the
lack of the military policy for
the United States and our habit of
military improvisation, was a bewilder-
ing lack of uniformity in troop
formation, weapons, and equipment. For-
eign visitors found amusement in our
system of maintaining a regular army,
state militias, and volunteer regiments,
but this amusement was attributed
to their lack of understanding of the
American Constitution. The lack of
uniformity in army units multiplied the
numbers and types of weapons, and
created fantastic problems of ammunition
supply. During the Civil War,
8 32 U. S. Statute 831.
9 Report of the Chief of Staff, 1917, p. 6, Sec. 5, National
Defense Act, Ap-
proved June 3, 1916.
10 Ibid. See also Report of the
Chief of Staff, 1917, 4.
11 Ibid., 3. All Officers below the rank of lieutenant-colonel were
required to
spend two years with the line between
successive appointments to the staff. This was
not in keeping with European practice
and interrupted the staff education of officers.
12 Ibid., 5-6.
252
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
for example, Iowa troops took the field
with at least eight different types
of muskets, and the several states
competed with the Federal Government in
the open market for the same weapons.13
The Spanish American War was
fought with four different shoulder arms
using two different types of am-
munition.14 This state of affairs was so obviously absurd that in 1903, a
single standard rifle, the Springfield
caliber .30 model 1903 rifle, was adopted
for all branches of the land and naval
forces of the U. S. Next to the
establishment of the General Staff, this
step was probably the most im-
portant single advance toward modern
practice made by the U. S. Army
prior to the outbreak of war in 1917.
Unfortunately, no such standardiza-
tion was possible at that time for
artillery materiel.
The adoption of the Springfield rifle
led to another step of great
importance in connection with the
mobilization of American resources for
war. It led to the attempt to
manufacture our military equipment on an
interchageable basis. Complete
interchangeability of all parts of weapons
had long been the dream of soldiers
charged with the maintainence and re-
pair of weapons in the field. When weapons
were made primarily by hand,
each repair required hand fitting. In
the absence of precision machine tools
it was impossible to manufacture weapons
whose parts were interchange-
able, although Eli Whitney attempted it
in 1800.15 A decision to produce
the Springfield rifle, which had been
developed and manufactured solely at
the Springfield Armory in Massachusetts,
at the Rock Island Arsenal in
Illinois, led to an effort to make all
parts of the weapon interchangeable.
This practice was taken up by the rapidly
growing automobile industry in
the United States and may be said to
have pioneered the modern chain
system of production. By the outbreak of
war in 1917, the United States
enjoyed manufacturing practices far in
advance of those of Europe. We
had developed far on the road to
standardized screw threads, standardized
taps and reamers, standardized gear
teeth, standardized spacing for rivet
holes in construction steels, and many
other similar practices.16 With these
advantages, all other things being
equal, we should have made a better
record for producing military equipment
than any other country.
We have observed that in its fundamental
organization the War De-
partment of the United States did not
possess the first two elementary req-
uisites of effective military action:
namely, we did not have an adequate
general staff, and our military forces
were not of such a kind as to enable
us to enjoy at once the advantages of
uniform equipment and organization.
There were other less vital deficiencies
of our War Department organiza-
13 F. A. Shannon, The Organization
and Administration of the Union Armies
(Cleveland, 1928), I, 125; The War of
the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official
Records of the Union and Confederate
Armies (Washington, 1881-1901, Ser.
III, Vol.
I, 418.
14 General R. A. Alger, The Spanish
American War (New York, 1901), 13.
15 C. W. Sawyer, Firearms in American
History (Boston, 1910), 25.
16 C. E. Peck, The Guage Section,
Engineering Division, Ordnance Department
U. S. A., MS in Ordnance Technical
Library, War Department.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 253
tion which should be pointed out in
order to understand fully the disap-
pointing results of our efforts to
mobilize industry. In April, 1917, the
War Department contained five separate
and semi-independent supply
bureaus which often competed against
each other for the same products.
There were nine different systems for
estimating military requirements and
ten different agencies for handling
money accounts. These were described
as "water-tight compartments,
erected by Congress, reenforced by usage,
hedged about by exclusiveness and
defended by jealousy."17 The absence
of a standard nomenclature for military
equipment, and the use of a ponder-
ous, outmoded military-legalistic
terminology defeated the efforts of the
most hardy civilian investigator to find
out what the army was talking
about. For example, the colossal
appropriations for small arms ammunition
throughout the war, amounting to nearly
one billion dollars, were made
under a bewildering heading which dated
back to 1877; it ran: "Authoriza-
tion for the manufacture or purchase of
ammunition for small arms and
hand use, for reserve supply, for
burials at the National Soldiers' Home,
and for firing the morning and evening
gun at the military posts as
prescribed in General Order No. 70,
1877."18 Said Representative John
Q.
Tilson, "One would think we are
appropriating several hundred million dol-
lars to fire the evening gun at the
soldiers' home."19
Certain congressional safeguards of
economy in peace-time proved to
be tremendous handicaps to prompt
military action in war-time. The
Ordnance Department which was most
vitally concerned with the problem
of providing weapons for the army
through the adaptation of American in-
dustry to the war program had its
personnel restricted by law to ninety-
seven officers.20 Because of the great
length of time required to train an
ordnance expert, this law restricted
very severely the number of potential
ordnance officers available for the
crisis of 1917. Congress did, of course,
increase the number of ordnance officers
after war was declared, but it
could never make up for the deficiency
of peace-trained officers. The
Ordnance Department required the
services of 6000 commissioned officers,
60,000 non-commissioned enlisted men,
and 80,000 civilians before the war
was ended.21 To build such a
tremendous organization on the nucleus of
100 officers can only be described as an
"act of faith."
The approved, indeed, the legal method
of purchase of any piece of
equipment for the Government was a
prolonged and torturous affair. The
written instructions of the Ordnance
Department for such transactions
17 Report of the Chief of Staff, 1919
(Washington, 1920), 16, 110; G. Clarkson,
Industrial America in the World War (New York, 1923), 125.
18 Acts and Resolutions, XXIII, 524.
19 Hearings before the Committee on Military Affairs on the Army Appropria-
tions Bill, 1919, H. R., 65 Cong., 2 Sess. (Washington, 1919), 71.
20 The National Defense Act of June 3,
1916, increased the number of ordnance
officers to 142, but the increase was to
take place over a five-year period, and all
efforts of General W. Crozier, Chief of Ordnance, to
get the increase at an earlier
date failed. W. Crozier, Ordnance and the World War (New
York, 1920), 10-1.
21 Ibid., 11.
254
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
covered 178 printed pages.22 The vast paper work of war contracts called
for an army of new clerks, but it was
illegal to hire any clerical help for
any governmental agency, unless the
estimates for such help were in the
hands of the Secretary of the Treasury
by October 15, and unless that
Congress had passed specific
appropriations for such help. In such a case,
the clerical help thus authorized could
be legally employed on July first of
the following year. No office
space could be rented in Washington for the
increased personnel of War Department
agencies without a specific appro-
priation covering the rental. No plant
for any government work could be
constructed until funds had been
appropriated for the same, and for pur-
chase of the land on which the plant was
to be built, and until a written
opinion of the Attorney-General could be
secured on the validity of the
title to the land, and until the written
consent of the legislature of the
state in which the land was located
could be secured. Similar examples
could be multiplied, but the foregoing
will show that one handicap to
prompt mobilization of American military
strength in 1917 was the mass
of peace-time economy legislation which
was not automatically repealed
when we declared war on Germany.23
Despite the official neutral policy of
the Wilson Administration, it
became impossible to disregard the fact
that the greatest war in history
was being waged in Europe. The Chief of
Ordnance of the U. S. Army
frequently warned congressional
committees that preparation for a war
on the European scale would require at
least two years of time and un-
limited funds.24 In September, 1915, at the request of the
Secretary of
War, the Army War College made a series
of half-hearted studies on the
question of a military policy for the U.
S. and the problem of industrial
mobilization for war. In the absence of
a clearly-stated foreign policy, no
intelligent military policy could be
formulated. Extremely little was done
to study the problem of industrial
mobilization for war. Either through
ignorance of what was happening in
Europe, or reflecting the kind of work
done by the U. S. Army service schools
at that time, the War College was
able to publish a very trivial study on
industrial mobilization for war.25
Their principal recommendations were:
that the President be empowered
in war-time to force acceptance of war
orders at fair prices, and second,
that a governmental board be organized
to study and organize industrial
resources. The last recommendation was
not acted upon until late in 1916.
Meantime, the Secretary of Commerce in
October, 1915, advocated the
22 General
Order, no. 7, Ordnance Office, October 14, 1917.
23 For examples of these restrictions
see Crozier, Ordnance, 26-7; F. A. Scott,
"Plans for an Unplanned
Conflict," Army Ordnance (XVI) July-August, 1935.
24 Hearings before the Committee on Military Affairs, U. S. Senate, 64
Cong.,
1 Sess. (Washington, 1916), 520; War
Department Annual Report, 1916 (Washington,
1917), I, 822.
25 A Statement of a Proper Military
Policy for the United States, Army War
College Division, U. S. General Staff
(Washington, 1916); The Mobilization of In-
dustries and the Utilization
of the Commercial Resources of the Country for War
Purposes in an Emergency, War Department, Document 517 (November 15, 1915).
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE: PROCEEDINGS 255
preparation of standard blue-prints for
parts of military weapons so that
manufacturers could have them without
delay if war came.26 This was not
put into effect. Even had it been
adopted and carried out, it would not
have helped much; because when war came,
the lack of artillery equipment
made it necessary for us to adopt French
military materiel.27 We continued
to manufacture only our own rifles, pistols,
machine-guns, and two types
of field guns, and in none of these
classifications of weapons did any crisis
in production arise.
One factor restricting preparations for
war was to be found in the
attitude of President Woodrow Wilson
prior to the election of 1916. H.
Breckenridge, the acting Secretary of
War, tells how he was called into
Wilson's office late in the fall of 1915
to find the President trembling and
white with passion pointing indignantly
to a little paragraph on one of the
back pages of the Baltimore Sun
which said, "It is understood that the
general staff of the U. S. army is
preparing plans in event of a war with
Germany."28 As long as the
President maintained this attitude, little could
be accomplished even by way of an intellectual
preparation for war against
our most likely adversary.
A wave of defense enthusiasm, however,
swept over the country in
1916. Congress passed a mass of
legislation known as the National Defense
Act of June 3, 1916. But the steps taken
were not designed to meet the
requirements of the immediate future.
The major appropriations were for
the construction of dreadnaught
battleships, which our most intelligent
observer in Europe, Colonel Frederick
Palmer, pointed out would be of
small utility in a war against Germany.
He wisely advised the construction
of large numbers of destroyers and small
craft to meet the very real menace
of German submarine warfare, since the
Allies had dreadnaught battleships
to spare.29 By this time, Germany was the only
adversary which our
rapidly changing policy would call upon
us to meet. Japan was a member
of the allied coalition against Germany,
and bad as our relations with
Mexico were, the preparedness steps of
1916 were not required for a possi-
ble campaign against her. Thus, the
defense measures of 1916 envisaged
a possible participation in the European
war, but they did not prepare us
to take part effectively in that
struggle.
More important than the actual military
steps of the National De-
fense Act was the creation of a Council
of National Defense to act in an
advisory capacity to assist in the
mobilization of industry to a defense pro-
gram.30 When formed in June 1916, the
council consisted primarily of
cabinet officers including the
Secretaries of War and the Navy. From
June to December, 1916, the council did
practically nothing. But on De-
26 Letter,
Secretary of Commerce to the Secretary of War, October 25, 1915.
27 H. A. De Weerd, "American
Adoption of French Artillery, 1917-1918,"
American Military Institute, Journal,
III (1939), 104-17.
28 F. Palmer, Newton D. Baker:
America at War (New York, 1931), I, 40.
29 F. Palmer, Our Gallant Madness (New
York, 1937), 42-3.
30 Sec. 2, Public 242, 64 Cong., 1
Sess., H. R. 17498.
256
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
cember 6, largely through the efforts of
Samuel Gompers, an advisory com-
mittee of the council was formed to deal
with the leaders of American in-
dustry.31 The first of a
series of conferences with industrial leaders was
held on February 13, 1917, and paper
plans were made to deal with the
heavy industries of the U. S. through
one man. Late in February the ad-
visory committee began to study the
military requirements for the equip-
ment and maintenance of a force of one
million men in the field for ninety
days. The magnitude of this program
prompted the advisory committee to
set up sub-committees for the various
major items of equipment required.
These committees foresaw so much delay
in the procurement of the required
equipment that on March 31, 1917, the
Council of National Defense form-
ally recommended to Congress that a
program of construction and purchase
of military materials and munitions to
cover a three-year period be under-
taken immediately.32 Unfortunately,
the U. S. was not to enjoy a three-
year period of military preparation, but
was at war within a week of the
passage of this resolution.
At the outbreak of war it was widely
felt that America's principal
contribution toward an allied victory
would take the form of manufactured
supplies, food and munitions.33
Our highly developed industrial system was
looked upon as our principal and most immediately
available weapon. We
had no immediate clear cut military
objective or plan of action. The acting
Chief of Staff of the U. S. Army in 1917
was aged General Hugh L. Scott
whose unshakeable composure gave the
impression that we were fully pre-
pared to take any necessary military
steps. Benedict Crowell, who later
became Assistant Secretary of War, tells
how he rushed back to Washington
from a fishing trip on the declaration
of war. He recalled the famous
interview of the American reporter with
General von Moltke in 1870 and
how the complete state of Prussian
preparations for war enabled Moltke
to give the American a long interview.
"All he had to do," said Moltke,
was "push the button." Crowell
knew both Baker and Scott intimately. He
asked for an interview with Scott with
some hesitation out of regard for
the general's probable overwhelming rush
of work. He knew that he would
be able to tell instantly from the
general's attitude the state of American
preparation. As in the case with Moltke
in 1870, he found the general at
leisure and in complete serenity of
mind. When Crowell rose to leave after
a few minutes, Scott insisted that he
remain, and talked for some time
in very optimistic and general terms.
When Crowell joined his waiting
friends outside he joyously told
them: "Everything is ready: there
is
31 Minutes of the Council of National Defense, I, 6. This and other page
ref-
erences are to the original minutes.
32 Ibid., I, 113.
33 Said Senator Thomas S. Martin to
Secretary of War Baker: "Good Lord!
You're not going to send soldiers over
there are you?" Quoted in Palmer, Newton
D. Baker, I, 120.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 257
nothing to do but push the button."34 Crowell came to realize later how
completely erroneous was the impression
conveyed by Scott's manner.
For some months after the outbreak of
war, no one knew just what
the U. S. intended to do to defeat
Germany, but after the visits of British
and French military missions to the U.
S., and after General John J.
Pershing had studied the situation in
France at first hand, the magnitude
of the American military program was
revealed. In July, 1917, the com-
mander of the A. E. F. cabled his
"General Organization Project" to the
War Department. It called for the
shipment to France of thirty divisions
by June, 1918.35 This
estimate soon rose to the staggering figure of eighty
divisions in France by June, 1919, and
finally to one hundred divisions in
France by June of 1920.36 Considering
that the American division of that
day had a rifle strength of two European
divisions, this was a colossal pro-
gram indeed. The sudden change from a
program of aid to the Allies in
the form of munitions, supplies, and
food, to a gigantic program of aid
through manpower, was due to the unfavorable
military position of the
Allies after the Russian revolution,
after a wave of mutiny crippled the
French armies in 1917, and after the
Caporetto disaster had overtaken Italy.
Thus, four months after war was declared
the U. S. finally had a mili-
tary program, a pattern to work by. We
were to place thirty divisions
in France by June, 1918. Just as soon as
we set ourselves to fill this
pattern, however, the military program
was doubled, then it was tripled.
Such were the inevitable consequences of
shaping a military program after
the war was upon us.
Once the military program was
undertaken, however, there could be
no complaint of the lack of zeal of any
branch of the War Administration.
Indeed, a record of those days in
Washington makes amusing reading today.
The wasted efforts of the intrepid but
uncoordinated agencies of the Gov-
ernment would have been sufficient if
properly applied, to defeat two such
antagonists as the German Empire. The
Council of National Defense saw
what was required and appointed a
General Munitions Board to assist in
the coordination of purchases by the
Army and Navy, and to establish
priority for various military and
civilian needs. This was the first real
attempt to mobilize industry and
coordinate the war effort, but unfortu-
nately the General Munitions Board, like
the Council of National Defense,
enjoyed only advisory authority and
could not compel acceptance of its
decisions or advice.37 In the
confusion of war-time Washington, this little
voluntary organization was almost lost
in the scuffle; and Mr. F. A. Scott,
its chairman, having no place to lay his
head, made his headquarters on a
sofa of the Army and Navy Club. With a
couple of tables for an office,
34 B. Crowell, "Procurement in
War". Lecture delivered at the Army War
College, December 10, 1926 (mimeograph
copy in Army Industrial College Files) 12.
35 J. J. Pershing, My Experiences in the World War (New
York, 1931), I, 101.
36 Report of the Chief of Staff,
1919, 10-1.
37 Annual Report of the Council of National Defense for
the Fiscal Year Ended
June 30, 1917 (Washington, 1917), 20-1.
258
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
and with his hat for a filing case, he
valiantly attempted to subdue the
growing chaos.
Since the General Munitions Board did
not possess authority suf-
ficient to compel its decisions to be
accepted, the several supply bureaus of
the War Department, and the newly formed
governmental agencies such as
the Coal Board, the Shipping Board, the
Food and Railways Administra-
tions, all went their separate ways.38
Contracts were accepted and placed
by these agencies for the Government and
for the Allies without any re-
gard for the possibility of their
completion or their effect on the rest of
the war program. New manufacturing
facilities were built in the already-
overcrowded New England industrial
district with a resultant tie up of the
transport system in the winter of 1917-1918.39 This confusion led to a
paralysis of the war program in that
winter so serious that Congress in-
stituted a very searching and hostile
examination of the War Department.40
Already in July, the General Munitions
Board despaired of accomplishing
any useful purpose without a delegation
of authority sufficient to make its
weight felt. It was replaced on July 17,
by a War Industries Board with
most of the same personnel and again
with only advisory authority.41
The gallant attempt of F. A. Scott of
Cleveland to make the War Indus-
tries Board effective without the
necessary authority led to his complete
physical collapse and to the angry
resignation of his successor, Daniel
Willard.
The investigations of the Senate
Committee on Military Affairs hinted
at a movement to establish a ministry of
munitions on the British model.
But since this would have reflected so
much censure on the Wilson Admin-
istration, the Administration attempted
to forestall this by a reorganization
of the War Department in December, 1917.
The steps taken were a little
amazing. A War Council, made up
principally of retired generals, was
given a vague area of authority between
the Secretary of War and the
Chief of Staff.42 This was a
hopeless error since it restored the dual con-
trol of military affairs which the
creation of the General Staff aimed at re-
moving. One of the first steps which
General Peyton C. March took when
he arrived from France in March, 1918,
to become Chief of Staff with the
rank of general was to insist that the
War Council be abolished as a re-
striction on the power of the Chief of
Staff.43 With his own supreme powers
established Iby a special War Department
order, he consolidated all War De-
partment procurement and distribution
agencies into a single Department of
Purchase, Storage and Traffic.44 Thus
eleven months after the outbreak of
38 Minutes of the General Munitions Board, I, 186,
224, 338.
39 Clarkson, Industrial America, 126.
40 Report of the Chief of Staff,
1919, 15, 16, 112, 114.
41 Hearings before the Senate
Committee on Military Affairs, 65
Cong., 2 Sess.
(Washington, 1918).
42 Minutes of the Council of National
Defense, I, 305-6.
43 General
Order, no. 159, War Department, December 19, 1917.
44 P. C. March, America at War
(New York, 1932), 49.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE: PROCEEDINGS 259
war, the activities of the
semi-independent bureaus of the War Department
were finally coordinated.
At about the same time, and due to the
same motives, that is, fear of
a congressionally established munitions
ministry, the question of compulsory
authority for the War Industries Board
was taken up. By this time it was
clear to many that compulsory authority
was essential. Before this was
given, other futile expedients were
tried, such as setting up E. R. Stettinius
of the House of Morgan as "Surveyor
General of Supply"--without au-
thority.45 Baker does not seem to have
approached this problem with his
customary clarity of vision. For as late
as February 8, 1918, he told a
Senate Committee that he thought
"that the difficulty with the War In-
dustries Board had not been lack of
power, but lack of facility to do all
the things which it had been gradually
and constantly preparing to do."46
Such oral fuzziness from Baker was highly
unusual. It should be added
that he had little confidence in Bernard
Baruch, the head of the War In-
dustries Board at that time, for he told
Baruch point blank in late February
that he did not have the qualifications
for the head of such an agency.47
When, however, it became a question of
the delegation of authority to
the War Industries Board or a
congressionally established munitions min-
istry, Wilson decided on March 4, 1918,
to grant Baruch sufficient authority
to compel all governmental agencies and
private industry to accept the de-
cisions of the War Industries Board.48 Thus, eleven months after the
declaration of war, the U.S. was in a
position really to mobilize industry
for the first time. Within a few months
the whole American war industry
was remolded into a compact
smoothly-running entity. Its
performance
from that time on was highly creditable.49
Large scale production of all
military needs of the forces had been
achieved at the time of the armistice
except in the matter of tanks,
airplanes, and heavy artillery. In a brilliant
post-war summary of his experience as
head of the War Industries Board
Baruch observed:
"Modern warfare requires that the
full power of the nation be
exerted in the shortest possible period
of time, not only to the
violent beating down of the enemy by
destructive material force,
but also to every process of slow and
insidious economic strangula-
tion and political isolation. Thus war
requires that, at the very
moment when productive effort is
deprived of millions of men for
military service, the country's
facilities for production must be
speeded up to disgorge unprecedented
volumes of supplies. No
such results are possible without a
sanction, control and leadership
45 General Order, no. 80, War
Department, August 26, 1918.
46 Clarkson, Industrial America, 53.
47 Hearings before the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 65
Cong., 2 Sess.,
pt. III, p. 2106.
48 Clarkson, Industrial America, 54.
49 Minutes of the War Industries
Board (Washington, 1935), 226; Final
Report
of the War Industries Board (Washington, 1919), 32.
260 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL
AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
in industry sufficient to organize and
deal with it as a single
unitary system instead of a highly
competitive community. Once
this unity is attained, however,
experience has shown beyond ques-
tion that the mobilized industry of
America is a weapon of offense
and defense far more potent than
anything the world has ever
seen--more terrible, I think, than the
mind of man has ever
imagined."50
Such, indeed, were the possibilities had
the mobilization of industry
been possible at an earlier stage of the
struggle with Germany. But as
the above paragraphs indicate it was
delayed until eleven months after the
war began by fundamental faults of war
department organization and by
lack of authority for the War Industries
Board. At the close of the war,
with the lessons of experience fresh in
their minds, Congress was so eager
to ensure a rapid mobilization of
industry in case of a future war, so eager,
in fact, that in the National Defense
Act of 1920 it passed two contra-
dictory provisions for bringing it
about. One section of the act gave the
Chief of Staff a supreme mandate for
mobilizing both manpower and in-
dustry, and another section of the same act
gave the Assistant Secretary of
War complete authority for all
procurement measures.51 This absurdity was
finally cleared up in 1921.52
It may be observed that a study of the
military history of Great
Britain during the years 1903-1917 would
have been of tremendous value
to those charged with the control of
military affairs in the United States.
It would have enabled us to avoid every
fundamental mistake we made.
The British suffered from the same delay
in setting up a general staff.53
They muddled along till 1916 with a
division of authority between the Chief
of the Imperial General Staff, the War
Council, and the Secretary of State
for war.54 They delayed
nearly a year before establishing an effective
agency for mobilizing British war
industry.55 The lessons of
their ex-
perience were free for us to adopt, but
we insisted on repeating their de-
plorable experience in each of the cases
listed above. Baker had studied
the history of the American Civil War,
and his conduct in office reveals that
he profited by the experience. He did
not delay in advocating compulsory
selective service for all men of
military age, and he never interfered, as
Lincoln did, with our commanders in the
field. If he had given similar
attention to British military experience
his record as Secretary of War,
50 Hearings before the War Policies
Commission, House Document, no.
163, 72
Cong., 1 Sess. (Washington, 1932), 31-2.
51 Sections 5 and 5a, National Defense
Act, Approved June 4, 1920.
52 General Order, no. 41, War
Department, August 16, 1921.
53 Report of H. M. Commissioners to
Enquire into . . . the South African War,
Command Document, no. 1789 (London,
1903); F. Maurice, The Life of Viscount
Haldane of Cloan (London, 1937); J. K. Dunlop, The Development of the
British Army,
1899-1914 (London, 1938).
54 Field Marshal Sir William Robertson, Soldiers
and Statesmen (London, 1926),
I, 168-70.
55 David Lloyd George, War Memoirs (London, 1933), II, 649.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE: PROCEEDINGS 261
and our record in military production,
would have been far more brilliant
than it was.
In the afternoon session held in the
Auditorium of the Ohio
State Museum and presided over by
Stanton L. Davis of the Case
School of Applied Science, the following
papers were read by
James M. Miller of Waynesburg College,
Waynesburg, Penna.,
and by Philip D. Jordan of Miami
University.
THE SPIRITUAL FORCE IN EARLY WESTERN
CULTURE
By JAMES M. MILLER
Culture, since the beginning of time,
nas been the evidence of man's
struggle upward, the measure of his
accomplishment. In the sense in which
I shall use the term, it is the effort
of groups of people to improve their
intellectual, spiritual, and esthetic
environment. By early western culture,
I mean that effort limited roughly to
the upper Ohio Valley in the first
quarter of the nineteenth century, that
somewhat neglected period which
saw the settler supplant the pioneer,
and which saw the establishment of a
permanent, stable society, the parent of
our modern industrial democracy.
The importance of that period and that
culture in shaping our later
and larger culture cannot be ignored. If
such a thing exists today as an
American culture, I am sure that it must
be sought within and immediately
adjacent to the Ohio Valley. Other
sections afford established cultures, of
course, but they are likely to be
especially significant of the areas which
produced them, and to offer particular
values and characteristics not widely
representative. The significant American
culture of today is to be found,
I am sure, in spite of Boston and New
York, in spite of Miami and Holly-
wood, in our own Middle West, even in
our own Ohio Valley.
Our modern conception of history, with
its emphasis on social and
cultural aspects, makes us aware of
certain vital forces which have been
instrumental in driving our society
forward, and in making us what we are.
These forces are numerous--the forces of
heredity, of environment, of
economic necessity, of political
expediency, of intellectual capacity, of emo-
tional content, of spiritual urge. The
effects of these forces vary with time,
and their significances are always
dwarfed or magnified by the attitudes and
sympathies of the observer. If I were to
seek the dominant forces which
shape the development of a culture, I
would seek first a symbol of that
culture. I offer you, therefore, a
symbol of our fully developed mid-
western culture, a characteristic
product of the culture of the last genera-
tion.
OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 249
AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MOBILIZATION FOR
WAR, 1917-1918
By H. A. DE WEERD
Admiral A. T. Mahan once described his
fellow Americans as being
"aggressive, combative, and
war-like", but he added, "they are the reverse
of military, being out of sympathy with
military tone and feeling."1 A
neglect of the study of military history
and economy in the United States
developed partly as a result of an ingrained
American distaste for and
suspicion of things military. The
frontier democracy in particular was
impatient with military institutions,
except, of course, when there were In-
dians to shoot or new lands to acquire.
The fear that liberty would perish
with the growth of military institutions
was commonly expressed. For
years the Congress of the United States
resisted the establishment of a
general staff on the Europeon model for
fear that its development might
not only lead to war, but to a loss of
freedom. These fears of military
institutions may seem a little unusual
in a people with such an impressive
record for military activity. It has
been pointed out that in 150 years of
history the American people have engaged
in 110 separate conflicts and
about 8,600 battles.2 The
extent of our military activity is attested by the
mere bulk of the papers for the War
Department which take up more space
in the National Archives than those of
any other department of the Gov-
ernment. Yet we have steadfastly refused
to concern ourselves with the
problems of military policy, preferring
to use the costly method of im-
provisation for each new military
crisis.3 Up to the year 1938 there was only
one notable study made of American
military problems and policy. That was
General Emory Upton's brilliant work, The
Military Policy of the United
States. Though Upton was a military thinker of equal rank with
the
greatest of nineteenth century Europe,
this study was allowed to languish in
manuscript form for twenty-one years in
the dusty files of the War De-
partment before it was
"discovered" and published by Secretary Elihu
Root in 1904.4 Such evidence of public
disinterest in American military
problems should be borne in mind when
considering the difficulties en-
countered in the attempt to mobilize the
industrial power of the United
States behind a gigantic trans-oceanic
military effort in the years 1917-
1918.
The term as well as the idea of an
industrial mobilization for war is
of relatively recent origin, although it
has now been grafted onto the peace-
economy of the totalitarian states and
has become commonplace. Such a
1 A. T. Mahan, From Sail to Steam (New York, 1907),
7.
2 W. A. Ganoe, History of the United
States Army (New York, 1932), 490.
3 Commenting on American military
policies Elihu Root wrote in 1880: "In the
conduct of war we have rejected the
practices of European nations and with little
variation have thus far pursued the
policy of China." Quoted in E. Upton, The Mili-
tary Policy of the United States (Washington, 1904), vii.
4 P. S. Michie, Life and Letters of
General Emory Upton (New York, 1885,
xxvii.