To the fulfillment of this enormous contract the Corporation bent a great part of its energies. And for its work and the work of its officers it agreed to accept an annual remuneration of one dollar--since neither individual nor corporation can make Uncle Sam a present of his services. So the United States Steel Corporation was one of a few, a very few, companies which may be reckoned among the dollar-a-year war workers of the United States. The Neville Island plant was, as has been said, to have been the largest big-gun plant in the United States. The plans called for a complete integration of operations including the erection of a big steel plant to supply the necessary raw material. The site chosen was an excellent one for the purpose, being located well toward the centre of the country with all-water transportation to the Gulf of Mexico and rail connections with every part of the United States. Besides the manufacture of big guns the Neville Island plant was to be equipped to make 40,000 shells, of 8-inch and larger sizes, a month. Immediately upon the signing of the contract the Steel Corporation set about the erection of the plant. Ground was broken and a number of buildings of various kinds erected. But the construction of the giant plant was necessarily a question of time. It is doubtful if, under the most favorable conditions, it would have been possible to begin operations until well into 1919 or to turn out a single gun until the beginning of 1920, and the armistice intervened on November 11, 1918, this causing the cessation of the work. The huge project, it might be said, died before it was fully born. Such equipment as had already been placed was moved to government arsenals elsewhere and the buildings dismantled. And the war history of Neville Island came to an end. What work was done, and property purchased on the final settlement, cost the Government something like $11,000,000. The abandonment of the project seems a pity. True, the winning of the war seemed to make the plant unnecessary, but, in view of the excellent location of the island for an arsenal, its position in juxtaposition to Pittsburgh, the great steel centre, and the work actually done and expenditures already made, it might be held that it would have been better to continue the work at least sufficiently to give the Government a small plant which could be expanded if need ever arose again, a nucleus for a great-gun factory in the event of another war. This could have been done at a comparatively small additional cost. But, as Kipling says, that’s another story.