hesitancy in acting more forcefully to prepare for entering the war . In the midst of the public debate , military officials were quite aware of their forces ’ poor state of readiness for war . They began to explore the issue in some depth .
• The General Staff spent most of 1915 preparing the Statement of a Proper Military Policy for the United States and 30 supplemental documents . One section recommended stockpiling as many essential supplies as possible for the initial use of any troops committed to battle .
• Separately , the Army War College prepared a study titled Mobilization of Industries and Utilization of the Commercial and Industrial Resources of the Country for War Purposes in Emergency . That report suggested giving the President broad powers to order civilian manufacturers to produce ( at a fair price ) any requested materials , and to seize any industries that did not comply with his requests .
• In October 1915 , the US Navy established the Naval Consulting Board as the first official agency charged with coordinating at least some parts of government and private industry . During the first nine months of 1916 , a subcommittee called the Industrial Preparedness Committee ( IPC ) supervised the conduct of an extensive inventory of more than 30,000 industrial plants to determine their capacity for producing war materials . The survey ’ s results were not as useful as promised ; they did not include any plans for converting production to military uses and did not correlate production capacity with any list of potential product requirements from the Army or Navy .
• In December 1915 , a board of senior Army officers suggested to the War Department that the government should purchase the great bulk of its military supplies from the civilian economy , and only operate its own factories to produce such items as small arms , artillery and ammunition . It urged close cooperation between the military and civilian economies , but it made no suggestions as to how to accomplish that goal .
It ’ s difficult to find any tangible actions that followed the production of these reports and surveys . However , it ’ s easy to suggest that the visible activities of the various boards and committees did help
World War I poster issued by the National Industrial Conservation Movement , which shows Uncle Sam firing a cannon labeled “ American industry ” shooting supplies and munitions to “ The Allies ” on a distant shore , 1917 .
awaken elements of American society to the potential mobilization for war . Perhaps for the first time in the nation ’ s history , these reports helped all parties acknowledge the important role the newly-industrialized civilian economy would have in providing the country ’ s military forces with the materials that would be needed for war .
The National Defense Act of June 1916 moved the United States a bit closer to mobilization by requiring manufacturers to give priority to government orders for military material . It authorized the Secretary of War to conduct an inventory of all facilities capable of producing arms and munitions , and to determine the advisability of using civilian or government-owned factories for munitions production . The five-person board assigned the latter task recommended using civilian manufacturers . Thus , they ratified the aforementioned de facto situation with Remington and Winchester , and paved the way for massive increases in the orders given to them in 1917 and beyond .
Enabling Full-Scale Mobilization
In August 1916 , Congress created the Council of National Defense ( CND ) and its National Defense Advisory Committee ( NDAC ). These organizations were
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
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