wartime restrictions

Amiss House, Woolen Mills Road

The result of these maneuvers was that the War Department "virtually annexed the business of fabricating the wool." Yet as late as the spring of 1918 only forty-five percent of American woolen mills were making cloth for war use. The remainder, after exhausting their private stocks, had to depend on uncertain allocations for civilian consumption.

Harassed mill owners could get some satisfaction from the brisk civilian demand for cloth and from the opening of South American markets previously supplied from Europe. But, despite the high price tags on consumer goods, profit margins fell before the onslaught of wool costs, wage increases, the scarcity of vital chemicals, and such wartime restrictions as the?by the Fuel Administrator in January, 1918.--Harry Poindexter