on credit, and to do so in the face of cash competition, for Congress did not make sufficient funds available until twelve weeks after the declaration of war. Nevertheless, the whole enormous undertaking was successfully carried through, and, save in rare instances, the soldiers never lacked for clothing or other Q. M. supplies. Wool was the most important of the raw products to be procured, since it entered into the composition of more items than any other material. Soon after the declaration of war the Quartermaster Department estimated that about 100,000,000 pounds of scoured wool would be required to meet the initial demands of the army. An inventory of all wool supplies, including wool ordered from abroad as well as the stocks on hand in this country, revealed the startling fact that there was in sight only about 35,000,000 pounds—barely more than a third of the amount needed. To insure the procurement of this wool and to head off speculation in domestic wool prices, for the American sheep were then about to be sheared, the government itself, in July, 1917, entered the wool business. It immediately optioned practically all the wool in the hands of all the dealers in the United States; it fixed a price for the domestic supply for the ensuing year; it arranged to procure the entire 1917 clip if needed; it took over all wool under import licenses, and it sent its buyers to South America and the other foreign markets. There was a wool administrator to buy wool, a wool-purchasing quartermaster to pay for it, and a wool distributor to sell it to the government contractors. Within a year the Clothing and Equipage Division had absorbed the entire wool trade of the United States. In fact, there was no wool market again and no public sale of wool until after the signing of the Armistice. The largest of the foreign markets which was available from the standpoint of accessibility was the Argentine. Australia and New Zealand were, of course, enormous markets, but the shortage of tonnage made it impossible to spare many bottoms for the long voyage to the antipodes. As a result of the shipping situation, when the fighting ceased there was an appalling shortage of wool everywhere in the world except in Australia and New Zealand. America was short of wool, there was a little in England, France had practically none, and in Germany and Austria there was none at all. But Australia and New Zealand had _a billion pounds_—and no ships.