To begin with, the soldier on the battle field is his own rifle repairman. His unit usually has on hand a supply of weapons damaged or out of commission for one reason or another. If, therefore, any part of the soldier's rifle is broken or damaged, he can go to the stock of unused guns on hand and take from another rifle the part which he requires; and it will fit his gun, provided there has been standardization in the rifle manufacture at home. But if the guns have not been standardized and each weapon is a filing and tinkering job in the assembly room of the factory, then the soldier in the field is not likely to be able to find a part that will fit on his gun; and his rifle, if damaged, goes out of commission. Or, if he finds a part which fits but does not fit perfectly, his gun may break as he fires it, and he himself may suffer serious injury. In the second place, standardization is essential to great speed in production. If one plant producing rifles encounters a shortage in any of the parts of the gun, it can send to another plant and secure a supply of these parts, a favorable condition in manufacture that is impossible if the weapon has not been standardized. The value of standardization in speeding up manufacture, however, is best shown in the actual records of rifle production during the war. The fastest mechanic in any of the three Enfield factories before 1917 had set an assembly record of 50 rifles in one working day for the British gun. After we had standardized the Enfield the high assembly record was 280 rifles a day, while the assemblers in the plants averaged 250 rifles a day per man when the work was well started. The Enfields sent to the Springfield Armory test were not standardized at all, but were largely hand fitted. Little or no attempt had been made to obtain interchangeability of parts among the rifles turned out by the three plants. Even the bolt taken from one company's rifle would not enter the receiver of another company's. The Ordnance Department was confronted with the dilemma of approving and issuing a weapon pronounced unsuitable by its own experts and thus obtaining speedy production, or of delaying until interchangeability was established. It chose the latter course.