In order to safeguard essential labour from indiscriminate en 1 listment, the Ministry was made responsible for the issue of exemption badges to skilled workers, and, later on, was required to issue badges on behalf of other war departments. The accom panying, but more difficult, work of de-badging that arose as the demands of the army for men became more urgent, was attached to the Ministry, and some serious industrial disputes arose over questions of exemption, or of alleged, improper recruitment, not ably the disputes in Sheffield and in Lancashire, but, for the most part, such disputes, through the agency of the different local con sultative committees, were capable of ready adjustment.
The manufacture of explosives of different kinds at the com mencement of the Ministry amounted to about 400 tons per week, and subsequently it exceeded 7,00o tons. The undertaking involved the unified direction of the chemical industries, gas works, distil leries, oils and fats trades and many allied industries. The filling of the shells, bombs, etc., involved the creation of vast filling fac tories, of assembly stations and transport arrangements, so that the weekly tonnage of filled ammunition sent across the English Channel came to exceed 53,00o tons per week.
During the progress of the war, the proportion of shells of the heavier natures was constantly increased, but the rise in the num bers of shells delivered as "completed rounds" is indicated in the following table:— Completed rounds per week June 1915 200,000 June 1916 I,000,000March 1917 2,000,000 The increase in the output of guns and machine guns was on similar lines, except that the number of machine guns per unit increased even more greatly towards the end of the war than that of guns. The trench warfare department became responsible for an increased volume of supplies, entirely comparable to that of shells, together with the materials for chemical warfare, both for offensive and defensive purposes. A committee of experts from the Royal Society and other learned bodies acted jointly for the Ministry and the War Office in this branch of supply, of which the character could only be described as increasingly ghastly as the war proceeded.
The provision of tanks in the first instance arose out of the work of a band of experts on mechanical warfare that had been set up by Winston Churchill at the Admiralty. Subsequently this organization was transferred to the Ministry of Munitions, which became responsible for experimentation with and for the supply of tanks. The supply of aircraft devolved from the air board upon the Ministry towards the end of 1916, and in this respect the Min istry acted as the supply department to the Ministry of Air, as it did in other respects for the War Office. In March 1936, the Min istry of Munitions was, in effect, reorganized as the Ministry for the Coordination of Defence. Sir Thomas Inskip, formerly Attor ney General, was appointed Minister with a seat in the Cabinet.
See the official History of the Ministry of Munitions (8 vols., 1922) ; also G. A. B. Dewar, The Great Munition Feat (1921) ; G. D. H. Cole, "Trade Unionism and Munitions" and "Workshop Organiza tion" (both 1923) in Economic and Social History of the Great War, British Series; Christopher Addison, Politics from Within (1924) ; D. Carnegie, History of Munitions Supply in Canada (1925).