with growing anxiety. When the troops went over the parapet, and while the ground was being consolidated and the guns brought up, there was a momentary respite, but within a few days the barrage broke out again, and before the end of July the army was living from hand to mouth upon the incoming supply from Great Britain. So far as all the heavy natures were concerned, practically the whole of this came from a single filling factory. The fear of an untoward accident to Chilwell or of an interruption to the cross-Channel service was thus added to the normal worries of production and transport. Fortunately, however, everything went according to plan, and the supply steadily grew until the winter brought the offensive to an end.
This achievement was not the first fruits of the formation of the Ministry of Munitions. The army had been living for months past on munitions supplied on previous War Office orders; but these orders would not have materialized had it not been for the help rendered by the Ministry to War Office contrac- tors, in technical matters (gauges, drawings, etc.), in supply of materials, and in control of the labour supply, recruiting, etc.
At the end of 1 2 months, however, the larger plans initiated by Mr. Lloyd George began to bear fruit and became one of the dominating factors in the war. From the middle of 1916 onwards, there was never a general shortage of munitions, and the special emergencies which arose from time to time were met with in- creasing facility, as the enormous industrial organism which had been set in motion during this first year became more re- sponsive to control.
Centralized Administrative Control. The second year of the Ministry of Munitions (Mr. E. Montagu becoming Minister in July 1916, and Dr. Addison in Dec. 1916) saw a very considerable readjustment of and increase in the artillery and ammunition programmes of the Ministry as a result of experience in the battle oftheSomme. The increased artillery demand naturally involved consequential increases in the ammunition programme, but in Sept. 1916 the army sent in a demand that the ration of am- munition per gun should also be increased. It was found that the i8-pdr., which at one period was thought might even be superseded altogether, had functions of supreme importance in furnishing the " creeping barrage," in following up before the " heavies " could be moved, and in shelling the enemy as soon as he left his permanent entrenchments.
The daily ration was therefore raised to 50 rounds per gun per day, while the 6-in., 8-in., and p-2-in. howitzers, whose rations had been 20, 15 and 12 rounds respectively, were raised to a uniform 30. Though these increases added 50% to Mr. Lloyd George's programme, they did not involve any changes in manu- facturing policy. They did, however, call for more complete control over materials and processes subsidiary to the ammuni- tion programme, and made necessary increasingly drastic restrictions of non-war work by means of priority certificates, while the growing shortage of labour involved a constant exten- sion of the principles of dilution. These changes involved a tightening of the centralized control of the Ministry over industrial conditions, and made it increasingly difficult for private industry to continue or for other departments to get their contracts fulfilled. It was largely on this account that the Ministry took over a number of additional services, of which the chief were the supply of aircraft, railway material, agricul- tural machinery and motor vehicles, the last of which was placed in the charge of Sir Albert Stanley.
When the Ministry took over the supply of aircraft, which was placed in the hands of Sir William Weir, the supply of aeroplanes was at the rate of 675 per month and of engines 721 per month. These figures rose to 1,117 an d 1,083 respectively per month in the next five months, as new firms came into production and the difficulties with materials were overcome. For the rest of the war, however, it was necessary to give a very high priority to aircraft production, particularly with regard to skilled labour, although the novel character of the work and its consequent freedom from restrictive trade-union practices permitted female labour to be introduced from the outset to a greater extent than in other sorts of munition work.
The progress of " dilution " generally throughout this period is shown by the fact that while in July 1916 employers reported that 336,000 women had replaced men, in July 1917 654,000 women had replaced men. In Government establishments, which had only employed 2,000 women before the war, 69,000 women had replaced men by July 1916 and 191,000 by July 1917.
Control of Steel and Other Materials. The development of the steel department into one of the most vital sections of the Ministry belongs to this period. Prior to the formation of the Ministry of Munitions the War Office had enlisted the services of a steel expert (Mr. McLellan) to assist them in buying the multitudinous variety of products covered by the contracts department, and in the spring of 1915 the Government bought, on behalf of the Sheffield trade, considerable quantities of Swedish bar iron which they held as a reserve against the possibility of Swedish supplies being cut off. Action had already been taken regarding some of the more rare metals used for ferro-alloys, an arrangement having been made, for example, by the Government to take all the wolfram of the Empire until after the end of the war. But in the first year of the Ministry's history the steel problem was not of critical importance, and the steel section was a branch only of the materials department, separate sections being organized to deal with high-speed and carbon tool steel and with metallurgical coke. In the spring of 1916, as the shell factories began to get to work, and the demand for shell steel to assume large dimensions, three aspects of the steel problem came to the front: namely, the necessity for an increase in the total steel production of the country, the re- striction of commercial or less essential war uses of steel, and the regulation of prices. The first scheme for increasing the steel plant was prepared in March 1916. In June 1916 plans for developing pig-iron production by converting and modernizing old blast furnaces and building a few new ones were prepared, while in May 1916 the first control order fixing the maximum prices of iron ore, pig-iron, steel, coke, bricks, etc., was passed. These arrangements were supplemented by the placing of orders for shell steel in the United States, and in June 1916 a representa- tive was sent to that country to arrange for supplies. During this first year some assistance in meeting demands was obtained by a modification of the War Office's specifications. By April 1916 the Army Council had approved the use of steel in shell containing up to -07% of sulphur and phosphorus. This figure was subsequently increased to -08%. One other problem which had given rise to difficulty was the supply of foreign ore, as a result of the increase in freights. A committee of ore merchants was summoned in the spring of 1916, and decided upon a uniform freight basis from Bilbao to Great Britain of 175. per ton, an official ore broker being appointed to take entire charge of chartering ore tonnage. The centralization of chartering had a wholesome effect, and though the price subsequently rose to 383. the demoralization of the market was prevented. Such was the position when in Aug. 1916 it was decided to form a separate steel department under Sir John Hunter.
The first action of this department was to press forward the plans already prepared for building new steel works and bringing new blast furnaces into operation. These programmes were subsequently enlarged at various times, and ultimately amounted to 1 66 new steel furnaces and 22 new blast furnaces in addition to the 40 old blast furnaces modernized. At a later date large rolling-mills were commenced, chiefly for increasing the supply of steel plates for ships, tanks, etc., and from time to time substantial improvements were made in the equipment of existing rolling-mills. In all these developments the Government shared the financial burden, not by direct subsidy but by allowing firms a deduction from their excess-profits-duty payments. A substantial percentage of these extensions were completed before the end of the war, but the programme was considerably delayed by insufficient labour and by difficulties in securing materials.
The problem of foreign ore supplies became increasingly difficult. The new department dissolved the existing committee and created a section for dealing with this problem. The purchase of Spanish ore remained in the hands of merchants, but they had
