Part 41

I have described at length the work of building necessary for the National Army camps, but at the same time extensive building was necessary at the 16 sites selected for the mobilization and training of the National Guard. While the National Guard troops were themselves quartered under canvas, many wooden buildings and storehouses had to be constructed for their use and, of course, the important problems of water supply, sewage, and hospital accommodations required substantially as much provision upon these subjects as upon those selected for the National Army.

At the very outset of this hurried and vast program, it became apparent that labor would have to be assembled from great distances, and in wholly unaccustomed numbers, that the laboring men would be required to separate themselves from home and family and to live under unusual and less comfortable circumstances than was their habit. It was also clear that no interruption or stoppage of the work could be permitted. I therefore took up with Mr. Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, the question of a general agreement which would cover all trades to be employed in assuring continuity of work, provide just conditions of pay, recognize the inequalities which exist throughout the country, and yet avoid controversy as between the contractor and his employees, which, wherever the justice of the dispute might lie, could have only a prejudicial effect upon the interests of the Government, by delaying the progress necessary to be made. Mr. Gompers and those associated with him in the building trades promptly and loyally entered into a consideration of the whole subject, with the result that the following agreement was made:

"WASHINGTON, D. C., June 19, 1917.

"For the adjustment and control of wages, hours, and conditions of labor in the construction of cantonments, there shall be created an adjustment commission of three persons, appointed by the Secretary of War; one to represent the Army, one the public, and one labor; the last to be nominated by Samuel Gompers, member of the Advisory Commission of the Council of National Defense, and President of the American Federation of Labor.

"As basic standards with reference to each cantonment, such commission shall use the main scales of wages, hours, and conditions in force on June 1, 1917, in the locality where such cantonment is situated. Consideration shall be given to special circumstances, if any arising after said date which may require particular advances in wages or changes in other standards. Adjustments of wages, hours, or conditions made by such board are to be treated as binding by all parties."

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The contractors throughout the country were notified of the existence of this agreement and of the determination of the Government to carry it out faithfully. The scope of the agreement was subsequently enlarged so as to include other emergency construction done by the War Department, and a board of adjustment was appointed which, at the beginning, consisted of General E. A. Garlington, formerly General Inspector of the Army, Mr. Walter Lippmann, and Mr. John R. Alpine, to whom all complaints were referred, and by whom all investigations and determinations in enforcement of the agreement were made. The personnel of this board was subsequently changed, and its activities associated with a similar board appointed by the concurrent action of the Secretary of the Navy and Mr. Gompers, but I need here refer only to the fact that, by the device of this agreement, and through the instrumentality of this board, labor difficulties and disputes were easily adjusted, and the program of building has gone rapidly forward, with here and there incidental delays due sometimes to delay in material, sometimes to difficulties of the site, and doubtless to other incidental failures of coordination, but in the main, the work has been thoroughly successful. When its magnitude is appreciated, the draft it made upon the labor market of the country, the speed with which it was accomplished, and the necessity of assembling not only materials but men from practically all over the country, it seems not too much to say that the work is out of all proportion larger than any similar work ever undertaken in the country, and that its completion substantially on time, is an evidence of efficiency both on the part of those officers of the Government charged with responsibility for the task and the contractors and men of the trades and crafts employed to carry on the work.

This great division of the War Department in times of peace devotes the major part of its energy to works of internal improvements and to the supervision of, improvement, and maintenance of navigable waters; but in time of war it immediately becomes a fundamental part of the Military Establishment. It was, therefore, called upon not only to render assistance of an engineering kind in the establishment of training camps, but had to establish camps for the rapid training in military engineering of large additions to its own personnel, and to undertake the rapid mobilization and training of additional engineer troops, of which at the beginning of the war there were but two regiments.

One of the earliest opportunities for actual assistance to the countries associated with us in this war was presented to this department. In the war against Germany transportation, and particularly railroad transportation, is of the utmost importance. It was easily foreseen that our own army in France would require large railroad facilities both in the operation of permanent railroads for the handling of our equipment and supplies and in the construction and operation of temporary roads behind our Army. In the meantime regiments of engineer troops, if speedily organized and dispatched to Europe, could both render valuable assistance to the British and French Armies and acquire the training and experience which would make them valuable at a later stage to us. Accordingly nine such regiments were organized and have for some months been rendering active and important service along the actual battle front. In addition to these, a tenth regiment, composed of men skilled in forestry and lumbering, was organized and sent abroad, and is now operating in a foreign forest cutting out lumber supplies for the use of our associates and ourselves.

Concurrently with the formation of these special engineer troops the department undertook the collection of material for the establishment and operation of our own lines of supply abroad. The railways of France have been maintained in a state of high efficiency by the French people, and they are performing the tremendous transportation task imposed upon them by the French and English military operations with complete success; but in order not to impose a burden which they were not designed to meet, by asking them to expand to the accommodation of our services, it has been found necessary for us ourselves to undertake the accumulation of railroad material for our own use in the theater of war. This work is on a large and comprehensive scale. Any detailed description of it would be inappropriate at this time, but it involves the creation of entire transportation systems and the actual construction and operation of railroads with the elaborate terminal facilities needed for the rapid unloading and dispatch of supplies, equipment, and troops.

The problem facing the Quartermaster General has been serious. For the small Regular Army of the United States a well-defined and adequate supply system had been created. It was large enough and flexible enough to permit us to make gradual accumulations of reserve as Congress from time to time provided the necessary money; but when the mobilization of the National Guard on the Mexican frontier took place, such reserves as we had were rapidly consumed, and the maintenance of the military establishment on the border required an increase which quite equaled the entire capacity of those industries ordinarily devoting themselves to the production of military supplies. When the present enlarged military establishment was authorized it involved an enlarged Regular Army, an enlarged National Guard and the new National Army, thus bringing upon us the problem of immediate supply with adequate reserves for an Army of 2,000,000 men; and these men were not to be stationed about in Army posts, but mobilized into great camps under conditions which necessarily increased the wear and tear upon clothing and equipment, and correspondingly increased the reserves needed to keep up the supply. In addition to this these troops were assembled for overseas use, and it therefore became necessary to accumulate in France vast stores of clothing and equipment in order to have the Army free from dependence, by too narrow a margin, upon ocean transportation with its inevitable delays. As a consequence the supply needs of the department were vastly greater than the capacity of the industrial organization and facilities normally devoted to their production, and the problem presented was to divert workshops and factories from their peace-time output into the intensive production of clothing and equipment for the Army. Due consideration had to be given to the maintenance of the industrial balance of the country. Industries already devoted to the manufacture of supplies for the nations associated with us in the war had to be conserved to that useful purpose. Perhaps some aid to the imagination can be gotten from the fact that 2,000,000 men constitute about one-fiftieth of the entire population of the United States. Supply departments were, therefore, called upon to provide clothing, equipment, and maintenance for about one-fiftieth of our entire people, and this in articles of uniform and of standardized kinds. The great appropriations made by Congress tell the story from the financial point of view. In 1917 the normal appropriation for the Quartermaster Department was $186,305,000. The emergency appropriation for this department for the year 1918 was $3,000,000,000; a sum greater than the normal annual appropriation for the entire expenses of the Federal Government on all accounts. Another illustration can be drawn from the mere numbers of some familiar articles. Thus of shoes more than 20,000,000 pairs have already been purchased and are in process of delivery; of blankets, 17,000,000; of flannel shirting, more than 33,000,000 yards; of melton cloth, more than 50,000,000 yards; of various kinds of duck for shelter tents and other necessary uses, more than 125,000,000 yards; and other staple and useful articles of Army equipment have been needed in proportion.

To all of this it has been necessary to add supplies not usual in our Army which, in many cases, had to be devised to meet needs growing out of the nature of the present warfare. It was necessary, therefore, to mobilize the resources and industry, first to produce with the greatest rapidity the initial equipment, and to follow that with a steady stream of production for replacement and reserve; second, to organize adequate transportation and storage for these great accumulations, and their distribution throughout the country, and then to establish ports of embarkation for men and supplies, assemble there in orderly fashion for prompt ship-loading the tonnage for overseas; and to set up in France facilities necessary to receive and distribute these efficiently.

The Quartermaster General's Department was called upon to set up rapidly a business greater than that carried on by the most thoroughly organized and efficiently managed industrial organization in the country. It had to consider the supply of raw materials, the diversion of industry, and speed of production, and with its problem pressing for instant solution it had to expand the slender peace-time organization of the Quartermaster Department by the rapid addition of personnel and by the employment and coordination of great civilian agencies which could be helpful.

The Council of National Defense, through the supply committees organized by it, afforded the immediate contact necessary with the world of commerce and industry, while men of various branches of business and production engineers brought their services freely to the assistance of the Department. The dollar-a-year man has been a powerful aid, and when this struggle is over, and the country undertakes to take stock of the assets which it found ready to be used in the mobilization of its powers, a large place will justly be given to these men who, without the distinction of title or rank, and with no thought of compensation, brought experience, knowledge, and trained ability to Washington in order that they might serve with patriotic fervor in an inconspicuous and self-sacrificing, but indispensably helpful way.

The problems of supply are not yet solved; but they are in the course of solution. Sound beginnings have been made, and as the military effort of the country grows the arrangements perfected and organizations created will expand to meet it.

In this general connection it seems appropriate to refer to the effective cooperation between the department and the transportation agencies of the country. For a number of years the Quartermaster General's Department has maintained close relations with the executives of the great railway systems of the country. In February, 1917, a special committee of the American Railway Association was appointed to deal with questions of national defense, and the cooperation between this committee and the department has been most cordial and effective, and but for some such arrangement the great transportation problem would have been insoluble. I am happy, therefore, to join the Quartermaster General in pointing out the extraordinary service rendered by the transportation agencies of the country, and I concur also in his statement that "of those who are now serving the Nation in this time of stress, there are none who are doing so more whole-heartedly, unselfishly, and efficiently than the railroad officials who are engaged in this patriotic work."

One other aspect of the work of the Quartermaster General's Office has engaged my particular attention, and seems to me to have been fruitful of most excellent results. The garment working trades of the United States are largely composed of women and children, and of men of foreign extraction. More than any other industry in the United States it has been menaced by the sweatshop system. The States have enacted codes and established inspection agencies to enforce sanitary conditions for these workers, and to relieve the evils which seem everywhere to spring up about them. To some extent the factory system operated under rigid inspection has replaced home work, and has improved conditions; but garment making is an industry midway in its course of being removed from the home to the factory, and under pressure of intensive production, home work in congested tenements has been difficult to eradicate.

The vice of this system is not merely the invasion of the home of the worker, and the consequent enfeeblement of the family and family life. Work done under such circumstances escapes the inspector, and the crowded workers in the tenement are helpless in their struggle for subsistence under conditions which are unrelieved by an assertion of the Government's interest in the condition under which these workers live. Moreover, wide distribution of garments made under such conditions tends to spread disease, and adds another menace from the public point of view.

The department determined, therefore, to establish minimum standards as to wages, inspection, hours, and sanitation. These standards were inserted in the contracts made for garment production, and a board was appointed to enforce an observance of these standards. The effect of this has been that it is now possible to say that no uniform worn by an American soldier is the product of sweatshop toil, and that so far as the Government is concerned in its purchases of garments it is a model employer.

This action has not delayed the accumulation of necessary supplies, and it has added to our national self-respect. It has distributed national interest between the soldier who wears and the worker who makes the garment, regarding them each as assets, each as elements in our aggregated national strength.

On the 1st day of July, 1916, there was a total of 96 officers in the Ordnance Department. The commissioned strength of this department increased substantially 2,700 per cent, and is still expanding. The appropriations for ordnance in 1917 were $89,697,000; for 1918, in view of the war emergency, the appropriations for that department aggregate $3,209,000,000.

This division of the War Department has had, in some respects, the most difficult of the problems presented by the transition from peace to war. Like the Department of the Quartermaster General, the Ordnance Department has had to deal with various increases of supply, increases far exceeding the organization and available capacity of the country for production. The products needed take longer to produce; for the most part they involved intricate machinery, and highly refined processes of manufacture. In addition to this the industrial agencies of the country have been devoting a large part of their capacity to foreign production which, in the new set of circumstances, it is unwise to interrupt.

Legislation enacted on August 29, 1916, as a part of the National Defense Act provided for the creation of a Council of National Defense. Shortly thereafter the council was organized, its advisory commission appointed, a director chosen, and its activities planned. It appropriately directed its first attention to the industrial situation of the country and, by the creation of committees representative of the principal industries, brought together a great store of information both as to our capacity for manufacture and as to the re-adaptations possible in an emergency for rapid production of supplies of military value. Under the law of its creation, the Council of National Defense is not an executive body, its principal function being to supervise and direct investigations and make recommendations to the President and the heads of the executive departments with regard to a large variety of subjects. The advisory commission is thus advisory to a body which is itself advisory, and the subordinate bodies authorized to be created are collectors of data upon which advice can be formulated. There was no intention on the part of Congress to subdivide the executive function, but rather to strengthen it by equipping it with carefully matured recommendations based upon adequate surveys of conditions. The extent of the council's powers has been sometimes misunderstood, with the result that it has been deemed an inapt instrument, and from time to time suggestions have been made looking to the donation to it of power to execute its conclusions. Whatever determination Congress may hereafter reach with regard to the bestowal of additional executive power and the creation of agencies for its exercise, the advisory function of the Council of National Defense ought not to be impaired, nor ought its usefulness to be left unrecognized. In the first place, the council brings together the heads of the departments ordinarily concerned in the industrial and commercial problems which affect the national defense and undoubtedly prevents duplications of work and overlappings of jurisdiction. It also makes available for the special problems of individual departments the results attained in other departments which have been called upon to examine the same problem from other points of view. In the second place, the council supplements the activities of the Cabinet under the direction of the President by bringing together in a committee, as it were, members of the Cabinet for the consideration of problems which, when maturely studied, can be presented for the President's judgment.

With the declaration of a state of war, however, the usefulness of the Council of National Defense became instantly more obvious. The peace-time activities and interests of our people throughout the country surged toward Washington in an effort to assimilate themselves into the new scheme of things which, it was recognized, would call for widespread changes of occupation and interest. The Council of National Defense was the only national agency at all equipped to receive and direct this aroused spirit seeking appropriate modes of action, and it was admirably adapted to the task because among the members of the council were those Cabinet officers whose normal activities brought them into constant contact with all the varied peace-time activities of the people and who were, therefore, best qualified to judge the most useful opportunities in the new state of things for men and interests of which they respectively knew the normal relations. For the more specialized problems of the national defense, notably those dealing with the production of war materials, the council authorized the organization of subordinate bodies of experts, and the General Munitions Board grew naturally out of the necessities of the War and Navy Departments, which required not only the maximum production of existing munition-making industries in the country, but the creation of new capacity for production and its correlation with similar needs on the part of the foreign governments. The work done by the General Munitions Board was highly effective, but it was soon seen that its problem carried over into the field of transportation, that it was bound up with the question of priorities, and that it was itself divisible into the great and separate fields of raw material supply and the production of finished goods. With the growth of its necessary interests and the constant discovery of new relations it became necessary so to reorganize the General Munitions Board as both to enlarge its view and more definitely recognize its widespread relations.

Upon the advice of the Council of National Defense, the General Munitions Board was replaced by the War Industries Board, which consists of a chairman, a representative of the Army, a representative of the Navy, a representative of labor and the three members of the Allied Purchasing Commission through whom, under arrangements made with foreign Governments by the Secretary of the Treasury, the purchasing of allied goods in the United States is effected. This purchasing commission consists of three chairmen--one of priorities, one of raw materials, and one of finished products. By the presence of Army and Navy representatives, the needs of our own Government are brought to the common council table of the War Industries Board. The board is thus enabled to know all the war needs of our Government and the nations associated with us in war, to measure their effect upon the industry of the country, to assign relative priorities in the order of serviceableness to the common cause, and to forecast both the supply of raw material and our capacity for completing its manufacture in such a way as to coordinate our entire industrial capacity, both with a view to its maximum efficiency and to its permanent effect upon the industrial condition of the country. Under legislation enacted by Congress, the President has committed certain definite problems to special agencies. The food administration, the fuel administration, and the shipping problem being each in the hands of experts specially selected under appropriate enactments. In large part, these activities are separable from the general questions considered by the Council of National Defense and the War Industries Board, but there are necessary relations between them which it has been found quite simple to arrange by conference and consultation, and the Council of National Defense, with the Secretary of the Treasury added as an important councilor, has seemed the natural center around which to group these agencies so far as any common activity among them is desirable.

In the meantime the Advisory Commission of the Council of National Defense and the council itself have continued to perform the original advisory functions committed to them by the National Defense Act. The War Department is glad to acknowledge its debt to the council and the commission. I refrain from specific enumeration of the services which the department has received through these agencies only because their number is infinite and their value obvious. The various supply committees created by the Supply Commission, the scientific resources placed at the disposal of the department, the organization of the medical profession, the cooperation of the transportation interests of the country, the splendid harmony which has been established in the field of labor, are all fruits of the actions of these bodies and notably of the Advisory Commission. It has been especially in connection with the activities of the council and the commission that we have been helped by the unremunerated service of citizens who bore no official relation to the Government but had expert knowledge of and experience with the industries of the country which it was necessary rapidly to summon into new uses. Through their influence, the trade rivalries and commercial competitions, stimulating and helpful in times of peace, have been subordinated to the paramount purpose of national service and the common good. They have not only created helpful relations for the present emergency but have established a new confidence in the Government on the part of business and perhaps have led to clearer judgments on the part of the Government in its dealings with the great organizations, both of labor and of capital, which form the industrial and commercial fabric of our society. The large temporary gain thus manifest is supplemented by permanent good; and in the reorganizations which take place when the war is over there will doubtless be a more conscious national purpose in business and a more conscious helpfulness toward business on the part of the Government.

As a result of the exchanges of views which took place between the military missions to the United States and our own Government, it was determined to begin at once the dispatch of an expeditionary force of the American Army to France. This has been done. General John J. Pershing was selected as commander in chief and with his staff departed for France, to be followed shortly by the full division, consisting entirely of Regular Army troops. Immediately thereafter there was formed the so-called Rainbow Division, made up of National Guard units of many States scattered widely throughout the country. The purpose of its organization was to distribute the honor of early participation in the war over a wide area and thus to satisfy in some part the eagerness of these State forces to be permitted to serve in Europe. The Marines, with their fine traditions and honorable history, were likewise recognized, and regiments of Marines were added to the first forces dispatched. It would, of course, be unwise to attempt any enumeration of the forces at this time overseas, but the Army and the country would not have me do less than express their admiration and appreciation of the splendid cooperation of the Navy, by means of which these expeditionary forces have been safely transported and have been enabled to traverse without loss the so-called danger zone infested by the stealthy and destructive submarine navy of the enemy. The organization and dispatch of the expeditionary force required the preparation of an elaborate transport system, involving not only the procurement of ships and their refitting for service as troop and cargo transports, but also extensive organizations of terminal facilities both in this country and France; and in order to surround the expeditionary force with every safeguard, a large surplus of supplies of every kind were immediately placed at their disposal in France. This placed an added burden upon the supply divisions of the department and explains in part some of the shortages, notably those of clothing, which have temporarily embarrassed mobilization of troops at home, embarrassments now happily passed. In the organization of this transport the constant and helpful cooperation of the Shipping Board, the railroads, and those in control of warehousing, wharfing, lighterage, and other terminal facilities has been invaluable. Our activities in this regard have resulted in the transporting of an army to France fully equipped, with adequate reserves of equipment and subsistence, and with those large quantities of transportation appliances, motor vehicles, railroad construction supplies, and animals, all of which are necessary for the maintenance and effective operations of the force.

The act authorizing the temporary increase of the military establishment empowered the department to create special organizations of technical troops. Under this provision railroad and stevedore regiments have been formed and special organizations of repair men and mechanics, some of which have proceeded to France and rendered service back of the British and French line in anticipation of and training for their later service with the American Army. No complete descriptions of these activities can be permitted at this time, but the purpose of the department has been to provide from the first for the maintenance of our own military operations without adding to the burdens already borne by the British and French, and to render, incidentally, such assistance to the British and French Armies as could be rendered by technical troops in training in the theater of operations. By this means the United States has already rendered service of great value to the common cause, these technical troops having actually carried on operations for which they are designed in effective cooperation with the British and French Armies behind hotly contested battle fronts.