Backward Russia and advanced America in 1914

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

I am reading the article "The Russian Army and the American industry, 1915-1917: Globalization and transfer of technology" by Frederick Zuckerman about an interesting episode of the First World War.

After the outbreak of the war, the Russian Main Artillery Directorate ordered a large number of Russian-style rifles in America. To oversee the production and acceptance of rifles, about a thousand Russian specialists were sent to America - engineers, technicians, inspectors.

It immediately became apparent that the vaunted American industry was incapable of producing the weapons Russia needed. The Mosin rifle turned out to be too difficult for the Americans to manufacture, and they did not even know such concepts as the accuracy of manufacturing parts (it turned out that the American industry does not even produce measuring instruments of the accuracy required by Russian standards).

Moreover, Russian orders were given not to some small firms, but to such well-known companies as New England Westinghouse and Remington Arms.

Russian specialists were shocked by the low qualifications of American workers and the blatant illiteracy of the management.

The "godfather" of the 3-line rifle, General Zalyubovsky, was also instructed to sort out the situation.

Having visited the factories, he reported:

"The Remington armory … started to file marriages again … At Westinghouse, I came across a whole factory, where in the already assembled rifles they are guided with hammers, filing, bending and thus debugging all the springs and small parts." The reasons for the delays were "poor organization of production, strikes, lack of hands and experienced technical personnel …, lack of templates."

An interesting conclusion about Westinghouse:

"We don't have the means to force factories that have accidentally become weapons and are purely commercial to make really good shotguns. A detailed study of the Remington and Westinghouse factories and a review of proposals … has confirmed to me that it is impossible to get passable rifles in America."

By January 1917, Remington had delivered only 9 percent of the volume of contracts, and Westinghouse - 12, 5. At the same time, due to the rejection of rifles, the Remington plant, according to Zalyubovsky, was close to collapse, and the Russian military department was offered take control of the plant or buy its machines. Zalyubovsky even suggested "completely transferring Remington's equipment to Yekaterinoslav", where at that time they were preparing to build a new plant. So in 1918, another modern arms factory could appear in Russia.

I had to take tough measures. Under the threat of sanctions and the termination of the contract, Westinghouse agreed to allow Russian specialists to manage the production process under the leadership of General Fedorov, a specialist in the production of small arms.

Fedorov solved all production issues on the spot and rebuilt the management of the plant in the Russian manner.

And a miracle happened.

The plant, which, under American management, produced only 50 rifles a month, 10 months after Fedorov's arrival, began to produce 5,000 rifles a day. The Russian order was finally fulfilled.

Much the same thing happened with the Remington plant.

Only with the amendment that the company was close to bankruptcy and preferred to sell the rifle factory to the Russian Provisional Government. The now Russian factory of the New Remington Company, under the control of Russian engineers, technicians and Russian-trained Americans, began to produce rifles at an accelerated pace. If under the old management, in three months the plant produced 29 thousand rifles, then under the Russian leadership the monthly production reached 107 thousand in December 1917.

Zuckerman tries to explain what happened by the fact that the Americans had experience in the production of civilian products, and in military production they lagged behind Europe. In addition, in Russia there were factories large by world standards and, accordingly, there was experience in their management, which the Americans lacked.

In general, there were few American firms with the latest advanced management, such as Ford and Singer, the bulk of American firms differed little from their European competitors.

Here is such a cautionary tale of how the backward Russian barbarians taught the Americans advanced management.