August i6, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
II 
America's Industrial Mobilization 
By Isaac F. Marcosson, Author of The War Aflerdhe War, The Rebirth of Russia, etc. 
THE first time I met Mr. Lloyd George he said : 
" This is a war of machines. It is a contest between 
British and French workmen on one? hand and German 
workmen on the other." 
A'nerica has taken this warning to heart. With the 
mobilization of her men has come a kindred mobilization of 
her resources, the setting up of a standardization of industry 
that is one of the miracles of the Republic at war. The 
story of her industrial preparedness — which was really the 
cornerstone of her whole military readiness — is a narrative 
of practical patriotism as inspiring as it is helpful. It is all 
the more remarkable when you realise that it has been 
achie\ed in a melting-pot of a democracy with a multitude 
of peoples, a diversity of racial ideals and, up to the declara- 
tion of hostilities against Germany, a sharp clash of war 
interests. 
Likewise you can understand the almost acute readjust- 
ment necessary in our industry when I say that for yeai^s we 
lidd proceeded on a 100,000 army basis and that suddenly the 
country was called upon to prepare and think in terms of ten 
or twenty times that unit. It was just as if a private manu- 
facturing establishment was forced, almost over night, to 
increase its capacity tenfold. Yet America has made the 
change without perceptible disjlocation to her vafet productive 
machine. How was it done ? 
There were four main reasons. The first is that the country 
declared instantly for conscription, which made the mobiUza- 
tion of industry swift and simple. We will not have to recall 
our artisans from camp and field. The second was the fact 
that for nearly three years we have been pouring munitions 
into Europe. The third was that almost from the day far- 
seeing men realised that a break with Germany was inevitable, 
our best business brains began to concentrate on the industrial 
war problems. A fourth — and in some respects the most 
important factor — was the* programme of industrial pre- 
paredness out of which grew the structure of munitions out- 
put. America was prepared to a far greater extent than her 
foreign critics comprehended. 
Quickened to War 
It really began on that fateful day in May, 1915, when 
German " frightfulness " registered one of its most appalling 
strokes with the destruction of the *Lusitania. It was then 
that the heart of America quickened to war. But with what ? 
Our army was less than Lord P'rench's first Seven Divisions ; 
the sole powder plant owned by the War Department had 'a 
daily capacity of 11,000 pounds, not enough to last the guns 
of Xew York harbour for one minute of firing. 
The .Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Josephus Daniels, had an 
inspiration. "Why not create a Board to study the whole 
medianism of war," he asked himself. He enlisted Thomas 
lulison who became one of the organising forces. The eleven 
leading scientific societies of the country were each asked to 
name two members to scr\-e'on what came to be known as the 
Naval Consulting Board. Around it rallied the mechanical 
wizards of th'o nation, men of the type of Mr. A'exandcr 
Graham Hell, inventor of tlie telephone, and his most dis- 
tinguished, colleagues. Straightway the Board saw that its 
great need was experts. The President got behind the move- 
ment and issued a call to the 30,000 mcmbere of the .American 
Society of Civil Engineers, the American Institute of Mining 
I'lngineers, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 
ttie .\merican Society of lilectrical Engineers, and the American 
( hemiral Society. An army of specialists was thus swung 
into line. Having mobilized the scientists the next step 
was to array the industrial chieftains. 
A Committee on Industrial Preparedness was formed with 
Mr. Howard Coffin as chairman. Mr. Coflin was a famous 
'•nginecr and master motor-car producer. He had per- 
sonality and a real genius of organization. Tall, sinewy and 
sc-lf-made, he was what .\merirans,delight'to call " a live wire." 
Proflii.tion is his hobby ; he thinks in terms of quantity out- 
put. He kni'w that the best safeguard of the country in the 
war r'nu-rgency was to be prepared to turn out munitions 
on the swift scale that it manufactured cheap automobiles 
and safety razf>rs. He also knew that the Rei)ublic could 
not put itself on this basis without first finding out what 
and how much it could produce. Under his experienced 
• Mr. James Clerard, late irnitecl States Ambassador in Berlin, in Iiih 
memoirs n<iw appearinR in The Dailv Telegral>li describing an interview 
he had with the Kaiser at l'..tsdam in Octobir u)\s, writes: ■The 
J-. mperor said he would not have permitted the torpedoing of the 
l.ustlania if he had known it, for no aentloman would kill so manv 
women and 'hildrcn." 
direction a complete survey of American industry was in- 
stituted. The committee prepared a printed form which -was 
filled in by 29,000 factories. This form called for the nature of 
the factory output, the capacity of the plant, the number of 
workers, skilled and unskilled, what war munitions could be * 
produced in case of emergency ; indeed all the vital statistics. 
Every State was thoroughly organised to make the census 
complete. Each one of the mechanical organisations that 
I have mentioned named a member to sit on a State Board. 
These Boards in turn sent skilled engineers in person to secure 
information. Never in all industrial history was a survey 
made under such conditions. Men whose salaries ranged from 
;(;5,ooo to £15,000 a year drudged day after daj', without 
thought of compensation. It was a labour of love and 
patriotism. When the facts were tabulated, standardized and 
co-ordinated the Committee knew precisely what it could 
count on when war was declared. 
An Industrial Revolution 
The results were .startling. Manufacturers suddenly 
■ realized that quite unconsciously their establishments were 
embryo arsenals. A jeweller for example, was surprised to 
know that his plant, with slight changes, could turn out 
periscopes ; a sash-chain maker found that he could make 
cartridge clips ; the phonograph-record producer that he could 
make delicate shell parts or aeroplane mechanism; the music- 
roll maker that he could turn gauges ; the cream-separator 
factory that it could add to the shell primer output. And so 
it went on. Even the makers of baby foods discovered that 
they could " do their bit " in the war game by manufacturing 
shell plugs. 
The committee went further than this. They gave prac- 
tically every factory in the survey a sample order for the muni- 
tion that it was best adapted to produce. It might be for one 
hundred six-inch shell cases or a set of aeroplane parts. This 
meant that all the necessary jigs, tools, gauges, blue prints 
and other necessaries had to be produced and a set of workmen 
skilled for the job trained. Here then was the nucleus of 
the whole industrial mobilization. When the country turned 
to war the experiment simply became a practical wprk on a 
huge and .nation-wide scale. The sample order was increased 
a millionfold. 
Out of the Committee on Industrial Preparedness came the 
Council of National Defence appointed by the President. 
It included the Secretaries of War, Navy, Interior, Com- 
merce, Agriculture and an Advisory Commission 'coniposcd 
of seven civiUans. These men wer6 : Mr. Howard Coffin, 
Mr. Daniel Willard, President of the Baltimore and Ohio 
Railway ; Mr. Juhus Rosenwald, a merchant prince who had 
built up the largest mail order business in the world ; Mr. 
Bernard Baruch, an eminent New York financier ; Dr. 
HoUis Godfrey, President of the Drcxel Institute and a dis- 
tinguished engineer ; Mr. Samuel Gompers, President of the 
American Federation of Labour, and Dr. Franklin Martin, 
one of America's greatest surgeons. From these men radiated 
the experience and the personnel, including the hosts of labour 
that would comprise the nation's chief bulwark in time 
of vwar. 
Now began an intensive organisation of the whole country 
which drafted the best business, scientific and industrial 
energy and resource. Long before President Wilson hurled 
down the gauntlet to. the Kaiser in his memorable speech 
of April 2nd, the national defence had set up its far-flung 
battle line. It had laid the foundations of a colossal Ministry 
of Munitions arid had a branch in practically every one 
of the forty-eight States. It was geared to the biggest pro- 
ductive machine in the world, and what was more important, 
that michinory was already a going concern. It was one of 
the principal national assets, antl when war was actually 
declared it went promptly to its task. 
By May 15th, the following departntcnts had been organised 
and were at work ; General Munitions Board ; Munitions 
Standards Board ; Aircraft Production Board; Medical Section; 
Comm'^rcial Economy Board (dedicated to the elimination of 
waste) ; Co-operative Committee on Purchase of Army 
Supplies ; Inventions Board ; National Research Council ; 
Committee on Shipping (out of which has grown the whole 
wooden and steel tonnage programme) ; Committee on Coal 
Production ; Inter-Department Advisory Committee, which is 
charged with the task of co-ordinating the war work and 
preventing any duplication of effort, and a Committee on 
VVoinen's Defence Work which will marshal the whole 
femde labour element with a view of its adaptibility to war 
