The change from decentralized operations through the bureaus to centralized control along functional lines followed a path strewn with many obstacles. One major obstacle was that the bureaus were still solidly entrenched in power by Section 5 of the National Security Act of 1916 which Ainsworth and Hay had deliberately inserted to hamstring the General Staff. For the same reason the new authority of the War Industries Board rested on dubious legal grounds. The WIB succeeded primarily because the attitude in Congress, thanks to the Chamberlain Committee, had changed toward the bureaus whose destructive competition, red tape, and delay seriously threatened the war effort. Only the enactment on 20 May 1918 of the Overman Act, granting the President authority to reorganize government agencies in the interest of greater efficiency for the duration of the war, gave the WIB legal authority over industrial mobilization and the General Staff authority necessary to reorganize the Army's fragmented supply system. 78

In practice the changes in organization toward a centralized supply system were a gradual process of trial and error made without interrupting the production and supply of material needed at the front; it was "like constructing Grand Central Station without disrupting train schedules." "

Continuing their opposition the bureaus fought consolidation and change every step of the way. As General Johnson saw it, "We did by rough assault" consolidate purchase activities but not "without agonized writhings and enmities, some of which have never entirely disappeared.'

80

Until the Overman Act's passage, the reorganization of the General Staff under General Order 14 had been really only a paper reorganization. The Directorates of Storage and Traffic and of Purchase were little more than holding companies with operations still fragmented among the still-independent, competing bureaus.

When Mr. Baruch reorganized the War Industries Board, a parallel reorganization of the War Department's supply system followed. Stettinius, Crowell, Goethals, and March

78

7 (1) Risch, Quartermaster Support of the Army, pp. 627-29. (2) Report of the Chief of Staff, 1919, pp. 344-46. (3) Koistinen, “The Industrial-Military Complex," pp. 389, 395-96.

70 Frederick P. Keppel, "The General Staff," Atlantic Monthly, CXXV (April 1920), 543.

80 Johnson, The Blue Eagle From Egg to Earth, pp. 91, 93.

agreed to appoint Johnson chairman of the Committee of Three on 2 April to examine the problems of the Army's supply system and propose a solution. Johnson's colleagues were Thomas N. Perkins of the WIB and Charles R. Day, a well-known Philadelphia engineer and efficiency expert.81

The Committee of Three, as it was known, noting the inefficiency of the existing bureau system, asserted in its report that any reorganization must unify and integrate the several bureaus on functional lines. At the top its organization should parallel that of the recently reorganized WIB to provide single War Department representatives instead of five in the areas of commodities, priorities, clearances, and requirements as well as purchase, production, finance, standardization of control, and replacement of Allied war supplies. It should transmit the military supply requirements from the Operations Division of the General Staff to the supply bureaus as the basis of their own requirements.82

Unification of the Army's supply system meant effective centralized control over the bureaus. The committee's report went through several revisions, but they all insisted that the fundamental issue of controlling the bureaus demanded standardizing their statistics. "There will never be effective action by the Office of Purchase and Storage until it has developed statistical control over the bureaus. The whole or

ganizational pattern is clipped out of statistics." 83

Bureau statistics, the committee insisted, should be uniform to provide the Director of Purchases with reports on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. He must also have complete access to bureau statistics for purposes of auditing them. Without such direct control it would be better to forget the whole thing. "The office is built upon a foundation of statistics or it had far better not exist."

"84

81 Report of Committee of Three.

82 Report of the Chief of Staff, 1919, p. 351.

83

(1) Report of Committee of Three. (2) The best historical account of the frustrated attempts to set up uniform statistics among the bureaus is by Lt. Col. Rodney Hitt, Chief, Statistics and Requirements Branch, PS&T, Organization and Activities of the Statistics and Requirements Branch, Office of the Director of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic, manuscript circa early 1919 on which the following account is based. File 029 (Statistical Requirements Branch), PS&T Files, RG 165. NARS.

The obstacles to gaining control over bureaus' statistics were enormous. At the bottom were the bureaus whose statistics were often inadequate and unreliable. For instance, The Quartermaster General's Office lacked information on the inventory in its depots across the country. Each depot had its own statistics which were unrelated to those of other depots.85 The bureaus fought bitterly all the way against changing their traditional methods.86

Second, under the reorganization of the General Staff of 9 February the Statistical Branch established in the Executive Division of the General Staff was clearly assigned responsibility for collecting, compiling, and analyzing statistics "from all the areas of the Military Establishment." Headed by Dr. Leonard P. Ayres of the Russell Sage Foundation, it had been transferred from the War Industries Board because the War Department simply had no central statistical organization of its own.87

While the Central Statistical Branch could compile and collect, it could not standardize the bureaus' statistics. For this reason the Committee of Three insisted that the Division of Purchase and Supply should be responsible for this function.

March's response to the report of the Committee of Three was a general order of 16 April which consolidated the Purchase and Supply and the Storage and Traffic Divisions into one Directorate of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic (PS&T) under Goethals who still continued to function as Acting Quartermaster General. The order also abolished the Office of Surveyor General of Supplies held by Mr. Stettinius, who then became, as mentioned above, Second Assistant Secretary of War for Purchase and Supplies. In May General Wood returned to become Acting Quartermaster General, while General Johnson had dual responsibilities as War Department representative on the WIB Priorities Board and as Director of Purchase and Supply. Gerard Swope, vice president of Western Electric, became assistant director.88

85

88 (1) Col. Frederick P. Wells, Development of Storage Organization, p. 2. (2) Adriance, Dana, and Douglas, Draft History of the Purchase, Storage, and Traffic Division, pp. 203-11.

(1) Johnson, The Blue Eagle From Egg to Earth, p. 91. (2) Hitt, Organization and Activities of the Statistics and Requirements Branch.

(1) March, The Nation at War, pp. 47-48. (2) Clarkson, Industrial America in the World War, p. 201. (3) Report of the Chief of Staff, 1919, pp. 443-45.

(1) General Order 36, 16 Apr 18. (2) Johnson, The Blue Eagle From Egg to Earth, p. 89–91. (3) Baruch, The Public Years, p. 51.

When the Overman Act became law, functionalizing the Army's supply bureaus began in earnest on the principle urged by industrialists of centralized control and decentralized operations. The argument over statistical control continued. Col. Rodney Hitt, Chief of the Statistics and Requirements Branch, PS&T, wrote after the war that there was "an animated and protracted discussion on this whole subject of a statistical organization for the Purchase and Supply Division, with the final result that the Chief of Staff did not approve the proposition of transferring control over the Statistical Branch of the General Staff to the Purchase and Supply Division." 89 This seems to have been the basis for the growing mutual disenchantment between March and Johnson which led to the latter's departure from the General Staff in October for a field command.90

The Statistical Branch did try to help the Division of Purchase and Supplies by lending them personnel, but the bureaus dragged their feet and would not provide qualified personnel from their agencies. Only in September did General March grant authority to create a Requirements Branch in the Office of the Director of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic responsible for co-ordinating calculations of requirements among the bureaus. Obtaining qualified personnel continued to hamper operations, and only a beginning was made in setting up control over the bureaus' statistics when the war ended. About all that was accomplished was the establishment of a uniform system for calculating requirements.91

Statistics aside, the Overman Act led Goethals, Thorne, Johnson, and Swope to argue that the bureaus should now be consolidated into a single service of supply. Goethals in a memorandum of 18 July to General March forcefully recapitulated the shortcomings of the existing system of separate bureaus. Despite recent changes the present system did not provide for effective executive control over their operations. What was required was consolidation along functional lines under the Director of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic "whose functions shall be executive-not supervisory," and "in command of the supply organization," except for procurement,

8 Hitt, Organization and Activities of the Statistics and Requirements Branch, p. 7. "Johnson, The Blue Eagle From Egg to Earth, pp. 91-94, 97.

91

(1) Adriance, Dana, and Douglas, Draft History of the Purchase Storage, and Traffic Division, pp. 36-40. (2) Report of the Chief of Staff, 1919, pp. 355-57.

production, and supply of artillery, aircraft, and other items of a highly technical nature. To avoid interfering with current operations, the whole reorganization should take place gradually.92

General March approved the Goethals' proposals a month later on 26 August as part of a larger reorganization of the General Staff. (Chart 2)

The General Staff now had become an active operating agency, not merely a supervisory one. The titles of the several Assistant Chiefs of Staff were changed to director and the organizations under them designated services in some instances, such as the Purchase, Storage, and Traffic Service.

The Operations Division retained its responsibilities for equipment, including construction and cantonment, and for the determination and development of programs setting forth the Army's requirements for equipment and other matériel. It was given responsibility for the design, production, procurement, storage, and maintenance of motor vehicles. This appeared to be a supply function and inconsistent with the organization on 18 April of a Motor Transport Service under the Quartermaster Corps and its subsequent establishment on 15 August as a separate Motor Transportation Corps with virtually the same functions as those assigned on 26 August to the Operations Division.93 Finally on 5 September the procurement of all motor vehicles, except tanks and caterpillar types, was transferred to the Quartermaster Corps, where it remained.94

A responsibility added to those of the Operations Division was "the appointment, promotion, transfer, and assignment of commissioned officers" together with responsibility for dealing with "conscientious objectors." Promotion and assignment of commissioned personnel had formerly been under the Executive Office of the Chief of Staff, and on 18 September a Commissioned Personnel Branch was set up under the Operations Division and made responsible for officer personnel manage

92 Memo, Gen Goethals for Chief of Staff, 18 Jul 18, sub: Organization of Supply System, pp. 1-24. File 029 (Supply System), PS&T files, RG 165 NARS. Quotations from p. 10.

(1) War Department General Orders 38, 18 Apr 18, and 75, 15 Aug 18. (2) Order of Battle (1917-19), ZI, pp. 314-19.

94

Report of the Quartermaster General, 1919, pp. 784-85.