_Militia That Had Come in Without Rifles_
Already, without a battle, the army had made requisition for 2,500 new rifles. The militia had come in with many rifles corroded from the powerful fumes and acid deposits released by smokeless powder. The rifling of many was ruined by rust, due to lack of cleaning after use. In more than one militia company there were men who had come in without rifles.[76]
Beholding this wastage that had occurred in peace, the authorities were inclined to believe the dictum of some of the military men who insisted that for every infantryman in the field there must be a rifle in reserve. Certainly it was evident enough that when fighting should once begin, the waste of small arms would be enormous.[77]
Two days more! The word went secretly to Hartford and Ansonia, to Bridgeport, to New Haven, to all the crowded world of Connecticut and southern Massachusetts where machines were panting night and day, buildings trembling with their steam fever, men toiling without sleep, to take advantage of the days of grace.
It was not only the brass cases for the fixed ammunition, the fuses for shells, the cartridges for rifles and pistols, the bayonets and entrenching tools for which the army depended on New England. A hundred places of peaceful manufacture were working as desperately as were the manufacturers of quick-firing guns, to provide the food that war devours with such monstrous rapacity when it begins to feed.
There were shops that turned out chains, and shops that turned out cooking utensils. There were workmen who never had done anything more warlike than to make bootlaces. There were manufacturers of whips and hats, and wheelwrights and makers of thread. Up and down all the river valleys, and in all the crowded towns they were working to give the army what it needed before the enemy should reach out and make the land his own.
Now that it was on the verge of being lost, the United States knew suddenly what this New England meant to it. It realized all at once what vast productiveness had enriched the entire Continent with its manifold variety. So accustomed through long generations to the endless supply, even the merchants of America had not realized how much they depended on Connecticut and Massachusetts factories for a thousand articles of daily utility.