Ministry of Munitions

Apart from the widespread assistance secured by the foregoing measures, the volume of contracts arranged directly by the minis try increased very rapidly as works extensions and the concentra tion of manufacture enabled many firms to undertake greater or ders. The execution of the first programme, however, made it evident that the requirements would exceed all that could be pro vided by all such methods, and a number of "national factories," under the direct ownership of the Ministry, were provided. Some of these factories were of vast capacity, and they came to furnish an increasing proportion of the output. The national factories varied considerably in type ; some were under the direct manage ment of the local munitions committees, and were chiefly named after the towns in which they were situated, but these factories were not often large ; others, sometimes of great size, for guns, machine guns, trench warfare and chemical supplies, for tanks or for aeroplanes, were erected by the Ministry but managed on an agency basis by experienced firms ; others, and finally, the largest factories, were directly owned by the Ministry itself and managed by men appointed by it. The great explosive factories at Gretna, Queensferry and elsewhere, most of the filling factories, many special trench warfare and chemical factories, as well as some larger gun and shell factories, belonged to this group.

The widespread activities of the Ministry necessarily led to the institution of many novel methods of working and extensions of State activity, and a review of some of them is required for an understanding of the scope of the gigantic enterprise.

Intelligence and Improved Methods.

A central depart ment was charged with the duty of transmuting into terms of machinery, materials and labour requirements the successive pro grammes supplied by the War Office. As a corollary of this work it was necessary, for example, to take the census of existing ma chinery in order to ascertain the new machinery requirements, and a special executive department was made responsible for the supply of all the machine tools and machinery shown to be re quired. Similar relations existed between the intelligence depart ment and the other executive supply departments.

In the course of time the collection and analysis of progress reports, in comparison with the time-programme that had been worked out, led to the provision of "weekly reports" in such a form that the minister and the chief officers could readily keep in touch with events. In order also to facilitate the united explora tion of deficiencies and difficulties a "fortnightly conference" was held of the minister and the chief heads of the departments; and the chief of the intelligence services was responsible for supplying the minister with a synopsis and criticism of the progress reports for that purpose.

The pooling of information as to progress and methods enabled the Ministry to have knowledge of the relative efficiency of differ ent firms and processes and to use the knowledge thus obtained in promoting improvements. There was in consequence a rapid ad vance in many industrial methods.

Allied in aim to the intelligence service a valuable system sprang up in the executive departments, whereby there were regular con ferences with works managers as to the value and results of differ ent processes, and the recommendations were made available directly to the different firms as well as through the district officers of the Ministry.

On parallel lines a munitions inventions department was set up to receive and examine the numberless suggestions that were forth coming from the humblest workers to trained experts, and many of the most fruitful new processes of the war period were obtained in this way. There was, of course, much that was useless in the mass of the material submitted to the different scientific and expert committees, but some thousands of suggestions were ap proved and ultimately adopted through the agency of this depart ment.

Costs and Cost Accounting.

Owing to the fact that the re quirements often involved the total producing capacity of the country competitive tenders were inapplicable, and the Ministry came to base prices upon an examination of the costs of produc tion in typical cases after making adequate allowances for other charges and profits. The different national and co-operative fac tories afforded excellent facilities for these investigations although many of the more enterprising firms readily co-operated. The powers of the Ministry in this respect were added to in the first Munitions of War Amendment Act, but, after a short time, the powers to investigate costs compulsorily were not widely exer cised. For the most part, prices became based upon an examina tion of the costs as found by the Ministry and by the different firms, although an independent special examination was often undertaken by the Ministry with the concurrence of the firms be fore a final agreement was arrived at. The first and most dramatic result of the use of these powers occurred in Feb. 1916 after it had been found that, making generous allowance for repayment of factory costs, many types of shell cases were being obtained at a little more than half former contract prices in the national fac tories and elsewhere. The prices for the principal shell cases were reduced as follows : Shell Cases Previous Price Reduced Price 18 pounders . . . . 20S. to 23S. 12s.6d.