In the midst of the nation's industrial resources, the story of the mobilization of Virginia's manufacturers for war is the story of the marshaling of the nation's industrial resources. There has been sympathy with the work on every hand. Conditions have been found highly satisfactory. Only a few business men have refused to give the desired information, usually to yield a fuller explanation of the committee's purpose and the country's needs. There are more than 30,000 manufacturing concerns in the United States doing a business of over 100,000 a year, according to a report of the committee, and all of these are being invented, to say nothing of many smaller plants with equipment peculiarly suited to turn out material for the fighting line.
"Although the committee's great industrial inventory has been making excellent progress," says the report, "national conditions recently became such that Chairman Howard C. Coffin sent urgent telegrams to the chairmen of the committee's State boards directing them to make all possible haste to gather the industrial information, vital to the army and navy of the United States. At the same time, Secretary of War Baker detailed five officers of the regular army service, two of them members of the general staff, to the committee's offices in the Engineering Societies Building."  New York to assist in rushing the work to the limit and to gain immediate benefit for the government of the large amount of data already obtained. 