[Illustration: FIGURE 9. PRODUCTION OF SMOKELESS POWDER AND HIGH EXPLOSIVES, FRANCE AND UNITED STATES COMPARED WITH GREAT BRITAIN. AVERAGE MONTHLY RATE, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, AND OCTOBER, 1918. _Smokeless powder_: Pounds. Per cent of rate for Great Britain. Great Britain 12,055,000 ========== 100 France 17,311,000 ============== 144 United States 42,775,000 ==================================== 355 _High explosives_: Great Britain 30,967,000 ========== 100 France 22,802,000 ======= 74 United States 43,888,000 ============== 142 TOTAL PRODUCTION, APRIL 6, 1917, TO NOVEMBER 11, 1918. _Smokeless powder_: Pounds. Per cent of rate for Great Britain. Great Britain 291,706,000 ========== 100 France 342,155,000 ============ 117 United States 632,504,000 ====================== 217 _High explosives_: Great Britain 765,110,000 ========== 100 France 702,964,000 ========= 92 United States 375,656,000 ===== 49] In the 19 months of our participation in the war our production of unfilled rounds in ammunition was 38,623,000 rounds, while that of France was 156,170,000 rounds and that of Great Britain 138,357,000 rounds. In that time we had produced 17,260,000 complete rounds, while France had produced 149,827,000 rounds, and Great Britain 121,739,000 complete rounds. The entrance of the United States into the war found the existing American explosives manufacturers operating to the very limit of their capacity in production for the allied governments and for general commercial purposes. Since the outbreak of the war in 1914 the explosives business in this country had increased enormously and the trained men familiar with manufacturing operations and conditions in this highly specialized and extremely dangerous industry had fallen short of meeting demands. When we entered the war, therefore, it became necessary at once to distribute this limited force of experts as equitably as possible and to put chemists, engineers and other specialists in the various plants under the supervision of this trained personnel so as to produce in as quick a time as possible a vastly enlarged force of competent operators and supervisors for the production of explosives. Summed up, the problem that faced the Ordnance Department was, while maintaining the current great production of explosives, to expand enormously the facilities for further production, to provide personnel for operating these expanded facilities, to build up entirely new manufacturing plants for making both propellants and high explosives, and in addition to all of this, to bring into existence huge loading plants.