214 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1919. 
The millions of pounds of smokeless powder produced each day 
in Government and private plants were not made from staple cotton, 
but from the shorter cotton linters, together with the very short 
fibers adhering to the cotton hull, and our production of propellants 
thus made no demands upon the store of cotton suitable for textile 
purposes. ? 
Before leaving the textile fibers we may, to hold our subject. to- 
gether, mention that 216,000,000 buttons were required in one year 
for Army shirts alone. Their raw material was ivory nuts, and 
the waste was converted into charcoal for the gas-absorbing can- 
isters of the gas masks. Only a very dense and hard charcoal func- 
tioned adequately, and for this we at first depended upon coconut 
shells. Our demands quickly rose, however, to about five times 
the entire coconut production of the tropical Americas. Cohune nuts 
were next utilized, and from them the exigencies of gas defense spread 
the demand to peach stones, ivory nuts, olive and cherry pits, and 
even to Brazil “ where the nuts come from.” At one time there were 
on the rails 100 carloads of peach stones and similar materials moy- 
ing to the carbon plants. We made in all 54 million gas masks, and 
the failure in supply of such a thing as coconut shells might have lost 
the war. . 
The American soldier was blessed with a good appetite and ate 
nearly three-quarters of a ton of food a year. He consumed during . 
the war period over 1,000,000,000 pounds of flour and 800,000,000 
pounds of beef, and we must not forget that behind the flour mills 
stood vast wheat fields or that only wide cattle ranges could daily 
fill the stockyards. We may omit the other imposing items of the 
gigantic meal, for which the total bill was over $700,000,000, but it 
should be noted that in it were included the widely varied contents 
of tin cans to the number of more than a billion. The tin can in its 
humble way marks the range of civilization, and he who has gone 
beyond the last tin can is an explorer of the unmarked wilderness. 
Tt defines equally the range of armies and the penetrating influence 
of the Standard Oil Co. In the same sense that Napoleon’s armies 
traveled on their stomach modern armies mark their progress by the 
tin cans they leave behind. It is significant, therefore, that the United 
States normally consumes about 70 per cent of the world’s produc- 
tion of tin, to which it contributes practically nothing, and half of 
this production goes into tin plate. As Germany neither produced 
nor could secure tin she was forced to substitute cardboard containers 
or to resort to dried foods. 
One bakery had a capacity of 500,000 pounds of bread a day, and 
contracts were made for 15,000 complete rolling kitchens, including 
of course cooking and camp utensils, with which may be mentioned 
the inconspicuous item of 10,346,000 spoons. Even less pretentious 
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