Yet this in itself was a problem. How should we meet it? Three courses seemed to be possible for the Government. In the first place, we could build from the ground up an immense Government arsenal having an annual capacity of 1,000,000,000 rounds, or ten times that of the great Frankford Arsenal. Or we could interest manufacturers in a project of building a private cartridge factory capable of producing 1,000,000,000 rounds per year. Both of these methods were predicated on the assumption that the existing cartridge factories had their hands full with orders. The third plan was to place our cartridge demands with the existing ammunition plants and let them increase their facilities to take care of our orders. As soon as the early orders had been given and all available capacity had been set going, this problem engaged the study and attention of the Ordnance Department. In the early fall of 1917 a meeting of the manufacturers of small-arms ammunition was held in Washington to discuss the matter. Principally on account of the difficulties in providing a trained working force for a new Government arsenal or private plant, the opinion was unanimous that the existing concerns should expand in facilities and trained personnel to handle the cartridge project. Out of this meeting grew the American Society of Manufacturers of Small Arms and Ammunition. Thereafter until the close of the war this society or its committees met about once every two weeks to discuss problems arising in the work. The officers of the Ordnance Department in charge of the ammunition project attended all of these meetings. The result of such cooperation was gratifyingly shown not only in the standardization of manufacturing processes in the various plants but also in the output of cartridges. The success of this effort is best shown in the production figures in the period from April, 1917, to November 30, 1918. In that time the United States Cartridge Co. turned out 684,334,300 rounds of our caliber-.30 service ammunition; the Winchester Repeating Arms Co., 468,967,500 rounds; the Remington Arms-Union Metallic Cartridge Co., 1,218,979,300; the Peters Cartridge Co., 84,169,800; the Western Cartridge Co., 48,018,800; the Dominion Arsenal, 502,000; the Frankford Arsenal, 76,739,300; and the National Brass & Copper Tube Co., 22,700,400.