War-Industry Committees

Lewis H. Siegelbaum, The Politics of Industrial Mobilization in Russia, I9I4-I7 A Study of the War-Industries Committees (New York St. Martin s Press, 1983), 37-39. The Special Council is important because it brought industrialist into the process for the first time. However, at first only the largest industrialists—mainly the traditional suppliers located in Petrograd-were allowed to participate. This provoked smaller industriaUsts— in Moscow and elsewhere— to set up their own institution the War-Industries Coimnittee. 

In response, the Ordnance Department contacted DuPont in early October, and solicited a bid for a new smokeless powder plant capable of producing either a half million or a million pounds per day. Within three weeks, DuPont submitted a proposal for a million pound per day plant, with the first unit scheduled to come on stream in July, and with project completion by April 1919. The Ordnance Department accepted the proposal, and a contract was signed by General Crozier, who passed it to Secretary of War Newton Baker for ratification. The fact that DuPont had already profited so much from the Allies, and stood to so much more from building and operating the new plant, troubled Baker, who referred the contract to the Explosives Committee of the War Industries Board, one of many ad hoc organizations formed to oversee American mobilization.""... 

Several members of this committee were critical of DuPont s profiting from America s war effort. What Pierre had asked for — and had received — in the original contract, was 13.5 million in constmction commission for building a 90 million government-owned plant. In addition, DuPont would receive 5c per pound for every pound of powder delivered. And if the cost of production fell below 44.5c per pound, DuPont would keep half of the savings. One member of the committee, St. Louis businessman Robert Brookings, believed that DuPont s actual production cost was about 35c per pound. If this were accurate, the company would earn an additional 30 million on the first government production order for 450 million pounds of powder. On the advice of the War Industries Board, Newton Baker cancelled the contract." ... 

With the onset of the Second World War, Stephenson studied acetone-butyl alcohol fermentation as a means of synthesis of industrial solvents. Of greater importance was her work on pathogenic bacteria and her contributions to the MRC Committee on Chemical Microbiology. After the War, she studied the bacterial synthesis of acetylcholine in sauerkraut, while her last years were spent on an investigation of nucleic acids in bacteria and of their breakdown by enzymes within the cells. 

Women chemists made up a significant proportion of the scientific workforce. Fortunately, the Women s Work Collection of the Imperial War Museum (IWM) has a significant amount of documentary evidence on the wartime women scientists. This useful material was compiled in 1919 by Agnes Ethel Conway of the Women s Work Subcommittee of the IWM. Conway circulated a questionnaire to universities and industries informing them that the Committee was compiling a historical record of war work performed by women for the National Archives. In particular, Conway added they [the Subcommittee] are anxious that women s share in scientific research and in routine work should not be overlooked. .. 13 Enough replies were received to provide a sense of the breadth of employment of scientifically trained women during the war. 

Government Grant Board. He received the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 1948. For many years, he was a member of the select Royal Society Dining Club. Following the end of the 1939-1945 war, he continued his work for the Scientific Advisory Council of the Ministry of Supply, especially with the Chemical Engineering Committee. Fora period, he was a member of the Plants and Soils Committee of the Agricultural Research Council, and was a member of the Blackman Committee which reported on research and related matters for the natural-rubber industry. His work for the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (D.S.I.R., later the Science Research Council) was of special importance here, he served on the Studentships Committee and as Chairman of the Chemistry Sub-Committee, and, during 1950-1955, he served as Chairman of the Chemistry Research Board. For several years, he acted as D.S.I.R. visitor to the Jute Industries Research Association, Dundee, and he was for a time a member of the Forest Products Research Board. 

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