Machine guns became of more and more importance as the war progressed and by the time of the entrance of the United States the demand for them was urgent and prodigious. Their manufacture in the United States was delayed somewhat for the completing and testing of the Browning machine gun, in order to secure a standard gun superior to the older types which could be produced in quantity, and the working out of plans for its manufacture. It soon proved its superiority in the speed and surety with which it works so triumphantly that both the French and British governments asked for whatever surplus over its own needs the United States could give them. The tools for the making of the guns had first to be produced and work that would ordinarily have taken a year was rushed through in half the time. But within a year quantity production of guns had been reached. Of machine guns and automatic rifles we produced during nineteen months a total of 181,662, and during the months immediately preceding the armistice we had reached a monthly production rate more than twice that of France and nearly three times that of England. The production of heavy Brownings began in March, 1918, and by the end of the following October there had been made of these 39,500 and of light Brownings 47,000. When we entered the war we had only two plants capable of making our own rifles, which were of a different caliber from those of any other nation. One of those factories had been shut down and dismantled and the other, which had been making rifles continuously for the United States for over a hundred years, was producing only twelve hundred rifles per month. The appropriation by Congress for the preceding fiscal year had been for rifles and pistols combined only $250,000. The work was immediately begun of adapting the British Enfield rifle, which was rechambered for our cartridges because they are more powerful than the British and do not jam. But manufacture of this Modified Enfield, Model 1917, was started during the summer of 1917 and over 2,000,000 of them had been produced by the end of October, 1918. During the same time Springfields, which are still used for certain purposes, to the number of 844,000, had also been manufactured, and the Springfield Armory was then producing more rifles in a day than it had formerly made in a month.