spring of 1915 a large section of instructed opinion still urged that Britain's best contribution to the Allied cause was to conserve her economic strength and carry on " business as usual."
In this environment the authorities at the War Office, many of whose most experienced personnel had been sent to the front, and who were overburdened by the colossal problem of keep- ing the army supplied with its most urgent daily necessities, failed to appreciate fully the change needed in the standard of equipment and the sweeping character of the plans that would have to be made for dealing with it. At the outbreak of war, for example, the standard of machine-guns was 2 per bat- talion and it was not until the spring of 1915 that this was raised to 8 per battalion. At the end of the war the standard worked out at 48 per battalion. As regards ammunition a small increase in the number of rounds per gun per day on which the programme of field-gun ammunition was based was made before Christmas 1914; by the early summer of 1915 the basis was raised to 25 rounds per gun per day for field guns and in Sept. 1916 to 50 rounds per gun per day. One reason for this moderation was that in the early months of the war the officers in the War Office who framed the munition programme constantly had in mind the limited capacity of the country for producing munitions, and it was not until the middle of 1915 that this consideration was abandoned.
War Office Policy. This point of view led to a conserva- tive attitude in the placing of contracts. With its staff both at headquarters and in the inspection departments seriously de- pleted, the War Office not unnaturally clung to old and tried sources of supply and limited its orders during 191410 Govern- ment factories and the armament firms. It relied for increased supplies on extensions to the Royal Ordnance Factories and at the works of Messrs. Vickers and Armstrong's (for ammunition and other munitions), Coventry Ordnance Works (chiefly for field guns and howitzers) and the Birmingham Small Arms Com- pany (for machine-guns), leaving it to the armament firms to obtain any further increase from the engineering resources of the country by placing their own sub-contracts. The immediate result was a big demand for labour from these armament firms, and while this was at first forthcoming, the continued absorp- tion into the army soon made the position difficult. At the request of the War Office, therefore, the Labour Department of the Board of Trade carried out a brisk campaign in Jan. 1915 for the recruiting of labour for these firms. This canvass pro- duced only small results. It brought to light, however, the strong objection of the ordinary engineering firm against per- mitting their most essential men to be passed on to the arma- ment firms and the demand that contracts should be more widely distributed.
This claim was constantly pressed by the Board of Trade; but during the spring of 1915 the War Office adhered to the policy of dealing only with the armament firms, and continually pressed for labour to be supplied to them. In March, however, the War Office permitted an exhibition of samples of munitions to be held at the central offices of the labour exchanges in the main towns of the country, and as a result a few small con- tracts were placed with individual firms.
Armaments and Treasury Committees. The nation was, how- ever, rapidly realizing the need for more drastic treatment of the problem, and at the end of March Lord Kitchener appointed an " Armaments Output Committee " in the War Office under the chairmanship of Mr. George Booth, a shipowner and banker. A week later the Government appointed a committee under the chairmanship of Mr. Lloyd George krfown as the " Treasury Committee " to take charge of munition policy. The " Arma- ments Output Committee " at the War Office at once became in effect the executive instrument of the Treasury Committee, and one of its first actions was the securing of an order for the Leicester cooperative group. During the months of April and May the Armaments Committee, on which Sir Percy Girouard (a director of Armstrong's) had now joined Mr. Booth, brought into existence several local committees to produce munitions in some cases by cooperative effort and in others to institute
national factories to which the various firms would contribute machinery and labour. At first an effort was made to maintain the predominance of the armament firms in certain areas by giving them within these districts a first call on the available engi- neering labour. Another plan was for the armament firms to " mother " the new contractors and exercise a general super- vision over the work of a district. But after much discussion all restrictions in favour of the armament firms were definitely broken down, and by the time the Ministry of Munitions was formed it had become evident that the list of direct contractors must be enormously increased. Following the lead of Woolwich the armament firms thereupon threw open their doors to vis- iting parties of engineers to learn and study the method of shell, fuze and other armament production.
But while orders could be and indeed had been placed on a large scale, deliveries were not forthcoming. The Armaments Committee endeavoured to deal with some of the difficulties by setting up a machine-tool department in the charge of Sir Alfred Herbert, who at once issued instructions to machine- tool makers to give priority to orders in hand for the British Government or for armament contractors. A raw materials section, which was placed in May under the charge of Mr. Leonard Llewellyn, also began an inquiry into the situation as regards copper, brass, aluminium, lead, antimony and spelter.
Labour. A still greater difficulty was labour. For several months the Board of Trade had been making great efforts to deal with the labour situation, and in particular to check the recruiting of skilled engineers, both from armament and other engineering works. Lord Kitchener's view on this matter was that any man who wished to enlist should be permitted to do so, and it was not until March 1915 that he accepted the principle that it might be of greater national advantage to retain a skilled munition worker at his occupation in the workshop than to allow him to join the army. A beginning was made in April 1915 by scheduling certain occupations in respect of which the recruiting officers were to discourage enlistment, and by is- suing badges to men in armament firms to save them from the pressure of public opinion, which at this time was being exerted very forcibly on able-bodied men to join the army.
But the labour shortage in the spring of 1915 was approached not only from the point of view of numbers of skilled men in em- ployment. Attempts were also made to increase production by diminishing lost time, suspending such trade-union rules as re- stricted output, and admitting semi-skilled, unskilled or female labour to do part of the work hitherto done by skilled men. Up to Christmas 1914 negotiations on these points took place between the shipbuilding and engineering employers and em- ployed, but without result. In Jan. and Feb. 1915 a sudden rise in prices and acute competition for labour between the various Government contractors produced considerable migra- tion of labour and a general state of unrest, which found ex- pression in a series of strikes. On March 15 the engineering work- people agreed with the employers that, to a limited extent and as experience proved necessary, semi-skilled or female labour might be substituted for skilled labour subject to certain con- ditions, of which the most important was that the substituted workpeople should be paid the district rate of the men replaced. These relaxations were to be withdrawn at the end of the war.
This, however, hardly went far enough, and, as the result of a series of conferences held between March 17 and March 27, the trade-union leaders signed the Treasury Agreement, under which they undertook to recommend their constituents to sus- pend restrictive practices for the period of the war in return for an undertaking that the Government would see that the profit resulting from these suspensions did not go to private employers. This agreement coincided with the passing of a Defence of the Realm Act which authorized the Government to " take over " firms engaged on munition work. It was at first intended that this should involve the actual control of the four big armament firms in the same way that the Government had " taken over " the railways. But after negotiations with these firms the idea of handing over their management to an executive committee
