HISTORY

Overcharging and the Creation of US Arsenals

It has been decided by the War Department, to establish three principal laboratories and arsenals: one at or near Albany; one at or near Pittsburgh; and one on the waters of the Chesapeake. At each of these establishments thirty or forty workmen will be employed, which will require at least one superior officer, and three or four inferior, at each station. The arsenals and laboratories will, therefore, alone, require fifteen or sixteen officers.

This plan was created to save funds for the US government which expected to pay upwards of one million of dollars over the course of the next year. Contractors were already beginning to inflate their prices:

I know an instance where one hundred and twenty dollars per ton has . . . been paid for cannon shot on the very spot where the United States had contracted to have them delivered at seventy-two dollars per ton.