On the first anniversary of the armistice the Ordnance Department’s system of industrial demobilization had cleared up a large part of the war business. The district boards had passed upon 94 per cent of all contractors’ claims presented, and the Ordnance Claims Board in Washington had disposed of 73 per cent of the ordnance claims. The settlements at this time had cost the United States nearly $131,000,000, but that sum had settled uncompleted portions of contracts to the value of approximately $1,000,000,000; and, in finding the net cost of the liquidation to the United States, from the sum paid out in these settlements there was still to be subtracted the receipts from the sale of materials taken over in the settlements. By the end of 1919 the district boards had passed 97 per cent of all claims and the Ordnance Claims Board 81 per cent. By that time the total amount approved for payment in adjusting the claims was more than $166,000,000. In the latter part of 1919, however, a different system of settlement went into effect. By that time about three-fourths of the ordnance claims had been settled, in a spirit essentially of bargain and compromise, the Government yielding points and the contractors yielding them in order to reach swift agreements. Those who did the bargaining for the Government were for the most part the original members of the district organizations, the men who had been in touch with the industry from the start. As the unfinished business diminished in quantity, however, the members of the district claims boards one by one left the government service and returned to their own affairs, until by the autumn of 1919 the boards were made up largely of new members, most of them uniformed army officers who bore no such intimate relationship to the contractors. Within the Government, too, there was a growing spirit of criticism of the bargaining method of settling the contracts, even though the bargains had been highly advantageous to the Government. It was felt that more conventional methods should be employed. The result was a marked slowing down in the rate of industrial demobilization in the Ordnance Department. It seems fitting here to say a word for the men who manufactured our ordnance during the war. The popular picture of a war contractor is that of a man swollen with new wealth and spending his money in riotous extravagances. This indictment, at any rate, cannot hold against the ordnance maker. Instead of profiting, the average ordnance contractor was glad enough to get out of the enterprise with a whole financial skin. Many were not so fortunate. An impartial investigation made by the Ordnance Department over its entire war manufacturing field showed that not more than one contractor in three or four, when the business was closed up, had anything to show for his war experience except the self-satisfying sense of having served his country.