The department determined, therefore, to establish minimum standards as to wages, inspection, hours, and sanitation. These standards were inserted in the contracts made for garment production, and a board was appointed to enforce an observance of these standards. The effect of this has been that it is now possible to say that no uniform worn by an American soldier is the product of sweatshop toil, and that so far as the Government is concerned in its purchases of garments it is a model employer. [Sidenote: The worker feels a national interest.] This action has not delayed the accumulation of necessary supplies, and it has added to our national self-respect. It has distributed national interest between the soldier who wears and the worker who makes the garment, regarding them each as assets, each as elements in our aggregated national strength. [Sidenote: The Ordnance Department.] On the 1st day of July, 1916, there was a total of 96 officers in the Ordnance Department. The commissioned strength of this department increased substantially 2,700 per cent, and is still expanding. The appropriations for ordnance in 1917 were $89,697,000; for 1918, in view of the war emergency, the appropriations for that department aggregate $3,209,000,000. [Sidenote: Most difficult problems of the war.] This division of the War Department has had, in some respects, the most difficult of the problems presented by the transition from peace to war. Like the Department of the Quartermaster General, the Ordnance Department has had to deal with various increases of supply, increases far exceeding the organization and available capacity of the country for production. The products needed take longer to produce; for the most part they involved intricate machinery, and highly refined processes of manufacture. In addition to this the industrial agencies of the country have been devoting a large part of their capacity to foreign production which, in the new set of circumstances, it is unwise to interrupt. [Sidenote: Organization of the Council of National Defense.] [Sidenote: An advisory body.] [Sidenote: Advisory function should not be impaired.] [Sidenote: The council supplements the Cabinet.]