CONTRIBUTIONS OF METALLURGY 253 



the difficult but absolutely necessary work of this club, Mr. 

 A. A. Stevenson, its Chairman, and Colonel William P. Barba 

 of the Ordnance Department, himself a most accomplished 

 maker of guns and gun steel. 



So wisely and so energetically was this pooling pressed that 

 by August, 1918, twenty-one of the most capable makers of 

 gun steel and of gun forgings, indeed all of those supplying 

 either the army or the navy, were brought into the closest re- 

 lations, so that at the frequent meetings of the club at the 

 various gun works its members interchanged even the most 

 secret information without reserve. 



The value of this organization, loose as it was, may be in- 

 ferred in a rough way from a comparison of our trifling pro- 

 duction of 55 finished guns per annum before 1917, with 

 our production in October, 1918, at the rate of 24,000 * sets 

 of forgings for guns between 3-inches and 9-5-inches in 

 diameter, though three of the gun factories had not yet com- 

 pleted their machine-tool equipment. 



This substitution of cooperation for segregation was of such 

 great and clear benefit to all that the Greenhorns' Club is still 

 working with the Ordnance Departments of both army and 

 navy, to design their new equipment in such a way that its 

 production may be quickly expanded to enormous dimensions 

 when the next demand comes. 



Two cases of very rapid construction of gun factories de- 

 serve mention. The Taeony gun plant, which cost $3,000,000, 

 was built in 7 months, between October nth, 1917, and May 

 1 5th, 1918, in spite of the extraordinarily severe winter. On 

 June 29th, 1918, its first carload of gun forgings was ac- 

 cepted and shipped, eight and one-half months after breaking 

 ground. 



The new works of American Brake Shoe and Foundry Com- 

 pany began shipping howitzers seven months after breaking 

 ground. 



At the end of the war we were making gun bodies ready for 



1 America's Munitions, 1917-1918, Benedict Crowell, pp. 43-44. 



