One of the largest single undertakings in ordnance salvage was the disposal of manufacturing plants either built outright or equipped with machinery by the Government. There were some 300 of these, and the Government’s investment in them was practically $525,000,000. The array included cannon and gun-carriage plants, shell-loading plants, powder works, chemical and acid plants, toluol plants, small-arms factories, ammunition factories, nitrate-fixation plants, and numerous shell-making plants. In the liquidation of the ordnance industry large additional quantities of ordnance production machinery, both new and used, fell into the hands of the Government. All of it, beyond the selections retained in the military reserves, had to be sold. During the first year after the armistice the sales of ordnance plants and machinery brought in a return of over $70,000,000. (Manufacturing facilities worth double that amount had either been stored or installed at the various arsenals, or else had been turned over to other departments of the Government.) In the spring of 1920 half the vast accumulation of ordnance plants and machinery had been disposed of. The most spectacular sale accomplished in this branch of ordnance salvage was that of the smokeless powder plant at Nitro, West Virginia. This plant was a self-contained town, with three square miles of land in its site, with houses for 20,000 people, theatres, schools, churches, stores, electric lights, paved streets, gas, a telephone system, water, and other modern improvements. The Director of Sales himself conducted the negotiations whereby the entire establishment was sold _en bloc_ to a development corporation, which planned to resell the establishment piecemeal to manufacturers and thus create a permanent industrial city at Nitro. The corporation paid a flat price to the Government for the Nitro plant and in addition admitted the Government as a partner in the profits. Several companies have already occupied factory buildings there. The Ordnance Salvage Board maintained representatives at Nitro to approve the resales as they were made.