252 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE 



private, which had the knowledge and the tools needed for 

 making first-class cannons. No administration in the last 

 twenty-five years can escape part of the blame for failing to 

 make our people understand how grossly we were unprepared. 



Happily we can turn from this humiliating ante-bellum state 

 to a war record of which our children and grandchildren may 

 be proud. 



The contrast between the two private ordnance works and 

 six government arsenals before the war, and the nearly 8000 

 establishments working on ordnance contracts on Armistice 

 Day, is striking enough whatever allowance we make for the 

 great number of ordnance items apart from guns at the end 

 of the war, when there were more than 100,000 distinct items 

 in the American ordnance catalogue. 



The story of the " Gun and Howitzer Club " is an interesting 

 example of the way in which we worked. In addition to our 

 two skilled cannon-makers there were plenty of steel makers 

 who could readily be given this great skill by filling in the gaps 

 in their already great knowledge. They were the material out 

 of which we must needs make gun makers. To this end the 

 Gun and Howitzer Club was formed. It was called by its 

 Chairman the " Greenhorns' Club " with the wise purpose of 

 impressing on the experienced steel makers and ordnance offi- 

 cers who were its members their ignorance of many essentials 

 of gun-making procedure. They could already make very good 

 steel, yet not steel good enough for guns. Moreover, in their 

 long and very intelligent practice many of them had developed 

 expedients which would be of help in hastening and cheapening 

 even the practice of the best gun-steel makers. 



The purpose of the club was thus to pool the knowledge of 

 the actual and potential gun makers, which meant to replace 

 their firmly established policy of secrecy with its opposite. In 

 order that so complete a reversal of trade policy should even 

 be considered, it must be proposed by men whom the trade 

 held not only in perfect confidence for their uprightness and 

 good sense, but also in affection. Such were the men who led 



