This board found an existing organization--the field administrations of the thirteen ordnance manufacturing districts--admirably adapted to the work of closing up the war business. The district organizations had been created to give the Ordnance Department a mechanism by which it could keep in immediate contact with the process of manufacture without congesting the headquarters in Washington to the point where competent management became impossible. They had been likened roughly to the fire exits of a theatre, distributed to prevent crowding at the front doors. In the district organizations were employed 33,000 civilians, uniformed officers, and enlisted men, and through this great force the office in Washington kept in as intimate touch with the work, the trials, and the accomplishments of its producers as if it had been employing the services of but a single factory. The ordnance field men knew the war factories as they knew their own offices. They were acquainted with the contractors, with the subcontractors, with the shop superintendents and foremen, and often with the workmen themselves. Obviously they were qualified to judge at what rate production could be stopped without injury to the industry or its workmen and to determine the settlement adjustments that would be fair to both sides. It is worth while pausing a moment to examine the thirteen ordnance districts and to note their headquarters cities, their extent, the characteristic sorts of ordnance supplies produced in each, and the chief production officer of each. _Toronto._ Embraced the whole of Canada. Produced principally shell machined and ready for loading, particularly 75-millimeter shell. As noted in the preceding chapter, all industrial demobilization in Canada was carried out by the Imperial Munitions Board, two of the members of which were special representatives of the War Department Claims Board, sent to Canada after the armistice for this purpose. _Bridgeport._ Included Connecticut and four Massachusetts counties. Primarily the small-arms district, producing all the pistols and revolvers, all the bayonets, all the automatic rifles, more than a million of the service rifles, most of the heavy machine guns, and almost all the small-arms ammunition delivered under war contracts. Mr. Waldo C. Bryant of Bridgeport was chief of the district. _Boston._ Included the rest of New England. The chief producer of soldiers’ belts, haversacks, mess kits, and other personal ordnance equipment; produced small-arms ammunition heavily, and produced also boosters and adapters (for shell) and carriages for 155-millimeter howitzers. Mr. Levi H. Greenwood, chief of district.