NATURAL RESOURCES — ^LITTLE. 219 
of 100,000 pounds a day. It covered 5,000 acres, involved the con- 
struction of a city of 20,000 people, and cost in all some $90,000,000. 
There the War Department found itself engaged in building 
churches. The Nitro plant had a daily capacity of 625,000 pounds. 
The United States was the only combatant to use nitro starch, 
which was employed in the loading of hand and rifle grenades and 
trench mortar shells. Reference should also be made to the utiliza- 
tion of mercury in the explosive program through its employment 
as mercury fulminate in detonators and primer charges. 
In addition to the immense amounts of steel required by the Navy 
for ships, armor, and guns of all sizes, the Army ordnance included 
various types as follows : Two-man 3T-millimeter cannon, mobile field 
guns of 75-millimeter caliber, 155-millimeter howitzers, 4.7, 5, 6, 8, 
and 10-inch field guns, and 12 and 14-inch rifles on railway mounts. 
All these were required in great numbers — thousands of the smaller 
arms and hundreds and scores of the larger. Preeminent as we are 
in the steel industries, all the facilities of the country were inadequate 
to realize the gun-building program. It was, therefore, to be supple- 
mented by a vast ordnance plant, greater than the Krupps, on Neville 
Island in the Ohio River near Pittsburgh. This was designed to com- 
plete each month 15 great 14-inch guns and simultaneously to carry 
forward toward completion hundreds of others, while turning out at 
the same time 40,000 projectiles monthly. The plant was equipped to 
build 16 and even 18 inch guns, the latter weighing 510,000 pounds 
each. Work on this gigantic construction project was suspended at 
the signing of the armistice and was abandoned soon thereafter. 
The amount of steel required for artillery is well indicated by our 
replacement agreement with France, under which we supplied for 
artillery furnished 6 tons of steel for each 75-millimeter gun, 40 tons 
for each 155-millimeter howitzer, and 60 tons for each 155-miliimeter 
gun. There must also be considered the immense amount of ma- 
terial tied up in machine tools and special steels required for the 
fabrication of guns, rifles, and projectiles. In fact, the machine tool 
supply Avas never adequate, and the most drastic measures were justi- 
fied in its requisition. 
It is interesting to note that it takes 10 months to build a 14-inch 
gun, the life of which at the normal rate of firing is 150 shots before 
relining. Since each shot is executed in one-fiftieth to one-thirtieth 
of a second, the actual life of the gun in the actual performance of 
its function is only 3 seconds long. For instantly destroying the 
effectiveness of captured cannon we used thermite grenades for 
fusing their firing mechanism. 
The steel for gun manufacture must obviously be of the highest 
quality and finest grade for its intended purpose and is often an alloy 
