training and equipping the volunteer New Armies, but lost control over munitions production and was increasingly sidelined from control of military strategy. French was also tarnished by his blatant meddling in politics, a factor which contributed to his enforced resignation in December 1915. Ministry of Munitions The Munitions of War Act 1915 ended the shell crisis and guaranteed a supply of munitions that the Germans were unable to match. The government policy, according to J. A. R. Marriott, was that, No private interest was to be permitted to obstruct the service, or imperil the safety, of the State. Trade Union regulations must be suspended; employers' profits must be limited, skilled men must fight, if not in the trenches, in the factories; man-power must be economised by the dilution of labour and the employment of women; private factories must pass under the control of the State, and new national factories be set up. Results justified the new policy: the output was prodigious; the goods were at last delivered. Following the creation of the Ministry of Munitions, new factories began to be built for the mass production of war materiel. The construction of these factories took time and to ensure that there was no delay in the production of munitions to deal with the Shell Crisis, the Government turned to railway companies to manufacture materials of war. Railway companies were well placed to manufacture munitions and other war materials, with their large locomotive, carriage works and skilled labourers; by the end of 1915 the railway companies were producing between 1,000 and 5,000 6-inch high explosive shells per week. As well as the components for a number of different types of shell, the railway companies, under the direction of the Railway War Manufactures Sub-Committee of the Railway Executive Committee, produced mountings for larger artillery, water-tank carts, miners' trucks, heavy-capacity wagons, machinery for howitzer carriages, armoured trains and ambulances. In 1916, when the many factories being constructed by the Ministry of Munitions began producing large volumes of munitions, the work of the railway companies in producing war materials actually increased and they continued to produce high volumes of munitions throughout the war. The official record, presented to the government in May 1920, of the munitions work done throughout the war by the various railway companies ran to a total of 121 pages, giving some idea of the scale of what was undertaken by the