Here are some facts and statistics which illustrate the big business of war as Americans have undertaken it.  They have had to erect cold storage-plants, with mechanical means for ice-manufacture, of sufficient capacity to hold twenty-five million pounds of beef always in readiness.

They are at present constructing two salvage depots which, when completed, will be the largest in the world.  Here they will repair and make fit for service again, shoes, harness, clothing, webbing, tentage, rubber-boots, etc.  Attached to these buildings there are to be immense laundries which will undertake the washing for all the American forces.  In connection with the depots, there will be a Salvage Corps, whose work is largely at the Front.  The materials which they collect will be sent back to the depots for sorting.  Under the American system every soldier, on coming out of the trenches, will receive a complete new outfit, from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.  “This,” the General who informed me said tersely, “is our way of solving the lice-problem.”

The Motor Transport also has its salvage depot.  Knock-down buildings and machinery have been brought over from the States, and upwards of 4,000 trained mechanics for a start.  This depot is also responsible for the repairs of all horse-drawn transport, except the artillery.  The Quartermaster General’s Department alone will have 35,000 motor propelled vehicles and a personnel of 160,000 men.

Every effort is being made to employ labour-saving devices to the fullest extent.  The Supply Department expects to cut down its personnel by two-thirds through the efficient use of machinery and derricks.  The order compelling all packages to be standardized in different graded sizes, so that they can be forwarded directly to the Front before being broken, has already done much to expedite transportation.  The dimensions of the luggage of a modern army can be dimly realized when it is stated that the American armies will initially require twenty-four million square feet of covered and forty-one million of unroofed storage—­not to mention the barrack space.

Within the next few months they will require bakeries capable of feeding one million and a quarter men.  These bakeries are divided into:  the field bakeries, which are portable, and the mechanical bakeries which are stationary and on the line of communications.  One of the latter had just been acquired and was described to me when I was in the American area.  It was planned throughout with a view to labour-saving.  It was so constructed that it could take the flour off the cars and, with practically no handling, convert it into bread at the rate of 750,000 lbs. a day.  This struck me as a peculiarly American contribution to big business methods; but on expressing this opinion I was immediately corrected.  This form of bakery was a British invention, which has been in use for some time on our lines.  The Americans owed their possession of the bakery to the courtesy of the British Government, who had postponed their own order and allowed the Americans to fill theirs four months ahead of their contract.