CONTRIBUTIONS OF METALLURGY 249 



achievement is not dimmed by our sending ordnance of other 

 kinds to Europe on a like scale, As early as March, 1915, fore- 

 seeing our eventual entry into the war, he sent engineers to 

 introduce into this as well as other countries the French methods 

 of making shells and gun steel, thus lightening the work of the 

 French commissions later sent to buy munitions. 



Like Dr. Schneider's story is that of the Perrone Brothers, 

 President and Chairman of the Ansaldo Company of Genoa, 

 makers of ships, turbines, locomotives, electrical machinery, 

 and like products. 



Seeing clearly, and long before the war, the menace to Italy 

 in the German peaceful penetration all about them, they pledged 

 themselves beside their father's coffin to keep all German inter- 

 ests and influence away from their great industry. When we 

 remember how the treacherous Teuton succeeded in controlling 

 Greece and in causing Russia's perfidy towards Roumania, we 

 are hardly surprised that this strictly Italian company, with its 

 wonderful possibilities, could get no orders from its own gov- 

 ernment. Nothing daunted, the management started at the 

 beginning of the war to turn its plants into gun-making estab- 

 lishments, and actually completed two thousand cannons before 

 it could get an order. Then, when the terrible Caporetto dis- 

 aster came, the government turned to it for guns, and seems to 

 have been greatly surprised to learn that these two thousand 

 guns were even then on hand ready for immediate shipment. 

 Thereafter, indeed, came orders in plenty, till the company, 

 now employing a hundred thousand men, had made ten thou- 

 sand guns. 



To the stupendous task of making these was added that of 

 financing the manufacture, for, plenty as the orders now were, 

 there was no pay. At one time the government owed the 

 Ansaldo Company about one hundred and forty million dollars. 

 In order to carry so great a load a combination of banks had 

 to be made. 



In the last two years of the war this company bought and 

 brought from America in its own steamers nearly fifty million 



