Powder and shell after manufacture went to the various sorts of loading plants, the propellant powder to be loaded into cartridge cases (for field guns of smaller calibers) or bags (for the bigger guns) and the high explosive to be poured or packed into the shell, boosters, or fuses. In carrying on this enterprise the Government either built or fostered the creation of seventeen great loading plants, eight of them--employing 35,000 persons, most of whom were women--being owned entirely by the Government. These had cost from $5,000,000 to $12,000,000 apiece. A few of these government institutions were retained by the War Department after the armistice. The shell-loading plant at Amatol, New Jersey, was added to the arsenal system under the name of the Amatol Arsenal, but the machinery was condemned for salvage. The Amatol Arsenal is being used principally as a depot for the storage of reserve shell-loading machinery acquired during the war. A fire in October, 1918, destroyed the government shell-loading plant at Morgan, New Jersey, and a temporary storage depot was erected on the site. The two bag-loading plants at Woodbury, New Jersey, and Seven Pines, Virginia, were disposed of after the armistice; but the third, at Tullytown, Pennsylvania, as the Tullytown Arsenal, was retained as an ammunition storage depot. Four other shell-loading plants were retained as storage depots, and at these several points exist the great reserves of loaded ammunition and of ammunition components left by the war. Nearly all the loading machinery was concentrated at Amatol and Picatinny arsenals. At Picatinny also was set up an experimental plant for the development of processes in loading powder and explosives. This plant also contains machinery for loaded pyrotechnics in rockets, star shell, and signal-pistol cartridges. One piece of equipment is a dark tunnel in which the candle power of field illuminants can be tested. The plant includes facilities for loading grenades, fuses, and boosters. The American Expeditionary Forces after the armistice had on their hands some 65,000 tons of field ammunition, mostly of French manufacture, besides several thousand tons of German ammunition taken in the advance to the Rhine under the terms of the armistice agreement. At first it was thought that the French ammunition, shipped to the United States, would be a military asset for several years to come; but as the months went on it became evident that, instead of being an asset, this ammunition was an embarrassment and a liability, and finally the War Department was glad enough to pay various foreign governments to take it off its hands.