Surplus chemical warfare materials, on the other hand, proved to have low salvage value. After the armistice the Chemical Warfare Service found itself with some 1,000 carloads of surplus materials on its hands. These materials had cost $11,000,000. Of the surplus, obsolete gas masks and other accumulations valuable to no one and therefore unsalable, accounted for $2,000,000. The rest consisted principally of raw materials and machinery. Certain of its raw chemicals the Service was able to dispose of to the artificial dye industry at a profit. The outside gas-making plants attached to the Edgewood Arsenal were sold by auction to manufacturers of chemicals. Though the sales of surplus factories, machinery, raw materials, and scrap and junk were of intense interest and concern to industry and business generally, the great masses of people in this country knew little or nothing about them. The wage earners, the millions drawing salaries of moderate range, were not beneficiaries--not immediate beneficiaries, at any rate--of the bargains the Government was offering. The trade journals were filled with advertising and reading matter about the sales of the war surpluses, but the newspapers seldom had anything to say about them. No doubt there were hundreds of thousands of Americans who, immediately after the armistice, reading about the excess stores which were overflowing the Government’s enormous warehouses, expected to benefit personally and at once by the situation. It was the opportunity of a lifetime to pick up a new stock of kitchen utensils for a song, or a lawn mower, or a new Dodge car at a knock-down price, or, at least, new supplies of underclothing and other garments, or of food at figures which would make the corner grocer squirm. But as the weeks and months went by and none of these opportunities ever presented themselves, it became obvious to any thinking person that the Government itself must be in league with the profiteers and must be holding out its stocks in order to let the gouging go on without hindrance.