It is not possible to describe all the multiple achievements of the War Industries Board, but a glance at them shows many of vital importance. By establishing maximum prices upon a number of staple raw materials necessary in the war-making program, an executive order of the President putting into legal operation its agreements and decisions, the Price Fixing Committee of the Board stabilized prices and prevented or lessened profiteering in many industries. The Conservation Section reduced wastage in industry in various ways, but especially by curtailing the number of patterns, or varieties, in each of many lines of production, scrutinizing for this purpose nearly two hundred different industries. Thus, the thousand and more different patterns for a buggy step were reduced to two, with resulting economy of both labor and material. A Committee on Emergency Construction took charge, under the Construction Division of the Government, of the vast building program upon which the nation had at once to enter. Cantonments, flying fields, camps, hospitals, embarkation depots, docks, wharves, storehouses, ordnance, powder, explosives and nitrate plants and other structures had to be built with the greatest possible rapidity. The War Industries Board first developed a method for getting the necessary information concerning contractors who could take charge of this enormous building program and devised a scheme of organization and then, by means of its priorities system, made sure that each operation should have at the moment of need the necessary materials, transportation facilities and labor. These structures, finished and in construction, totaled a cost at the end of the war of approximately two billion dollars. The Chemical Division did highly important work in the way of instituting, aiding and speeding scientific investigations and stimulating new chemical industries, such as the potash supply and the dye industry. The Steel Division received the enthusiastic coöperation of the steel manufacturers, who speeded up their plants for the production of the immensely increased quantities needed of this vital product. More and more steel, and ever more steel, was necessary for the making of munitions, guns, cannon, rails, locomotives, shipyards, ships. In the last six months of 1918 the steel products that went into direct and indirect war necessities amounted to 22,000,000 tons, a production of about twenty-five per cent more than would have been the reasonable expectation for the period. The Steel Division handled approximately 40,000,000 tons of steel per year. The Board’s program of speeding work greatly increased the output in many vital industries. For instance, the locomotive industry doubled its production in three months without increasing its facilities or expanding its works. It has been estimated that the industrial capacity of the country was increased by at least twenty per cent.