12/29/2021
The Great Demand for Uniform Clothing at US Training Camps
Manufacturing US Army War Goods During WW1
At the onset of World War 1, the US Military was in need of a large amount of clothing for all branches of the armed services, and needed them very quickly. The US Government did have private manufacturers for their uniform clothing, but they were not capable of producing the quantity that the military needed. The military did own some clothing factories around the country, but they also were not able to make clothing on the scale needed to supply the large surge of men that were assembled to go to war.
The two government uniform factories were located at the Philadelphia Quartermaster Depot, and at the Quartermaster Depot in Jeffersonville Indiana. The Jeffersonville Depot produced army shirts, breeches and outer clothing. It expanded in size and covered 10 square blocks during the war, and it became the largest shirt manufacturer in the world.
The Jeffersonville Uniform Factory, just across the Ohio River from Louisville Ky, was established in February 1918. Louisville already had established clothing and cotton mill factories. Many experienced workers were easily secured to work in the government factory with wages for the “all women production force”, ranged from $50 to $80 per month. The factory operated two shifts of eight hours, produced 750 woolen coats and 1,500 pairs of woolen trousers per day. The factory employed approximately 2000 workers at it’s peak of production.
The Jeffersonville plant installed the most modern woolen cloth shrinking plant in the United States, at the cost of $50,000 and could treat 10,000 yards of wool per day. The US Army plant in Jeffersonville was able to make uniforms at a cost of 25% less than those purchased from private manufacturers. The cost to produce a woolen Service Coat was $1.02, and a pair of breeches cost .54 cents.
The great demand for clothing and skilled seamstresses were so strong in 1917 that the US Army implemented a program, hiring expert seamstresses to work and teach out of their homes. The new sewing women, who had volunteered to work from home, were recruited through newspaper ads. They assembled a sewing force of 20,000 women operatives, from practically every town and village throughout southern Indiana and Kentucky.
This new sewing force for the Jeffersonville QM Depot, increased the output of shirts from 600,000 per year to 8,500,000 per year. Each home worker was supplied with one complete shirt to be used as a template and was provided the shirt material from the Jeffersonville factory. The material was precut to a pattern and bundled in sets of 10 shirts. The completed shirts were inspected by the factory, and cleaned before being shipped out.
Manufacturing at the Jeffersonville Shirt Factory continued at full capacity until the end of World War 1. Production was halted in November of 1918. The Government clothing factories manufactured more uniforms than it secured from any single outside source.
Copyright Dec 2021
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