More about J. C. Garand who designed America’s Wonder Rifle

Camp News, Volume 3, Issue 137, 28 August 1942, Page 6

More about J. C. Garand who designed America’s Wonder Rifle

(From the I.C.S. Journal Ambition.)

Down at the Springfield arsenal there is a civilian employee as intent upon his task as any man can be, though he appears slightly bewildered that there should be so much interest and attention centred on him.

The slight accent in his speech is a reminder of his French-Canadian and his boyhood life in his native St. Remi near Montreal. He is famous. Whether or not he realizes the fact, no one knows. Certainly it has not affected his natural simplicity of manner nor diverted his attention of manner nor diverted his attention one iota from the job before him. He is John C. Garand, inventor of the Garand rifle which is now being produced at the rate of 1,000 a day for the United States Army.

Forty years ago a boy, then 12 years of age, invented a machine which painted the bottom of a bobbin and eliminated hand operation. The company for which he worked, a textile mill in Jewett City, Connecticut, appropriated his invention and rewarded him by raising his pay to 9 dollars a week. Such a sum seems small enough to-day, but at that time it was more than many adult employees received. It meant a great deal to this lad who had only a few years of schooling in his native village and who spoke no English. ' The money was welcome, for he was one of a family of 14, and every dollar was needed at home. As far as Garand himself is concerned, money alone has never meant much to him. Back at

Jewett City, however, there was a chief mechanic who took an interest in the lad. This mechanic had taken a correspondence school course and he urged young Garand to do likewise. The outcome was that he enrolled with the Schools in Scranton, -Pennsylvania, for a course in Steam Engineering, which he later switched to Mathematics and English. It wasn’t easy to plod through each lesson with the aid of a dictionary, but he was doing it, and one day he got a break.

lt seems that whenever the factory inspector came into the front office of the place at which Garand worked, the under-age factory workers were led out the rear door. One day the signals got mixed, and the youngsters filed out the front way, into the inspector’s arms. The company was fined for each under-age employee and the boys had to go to school for a while until the thing blew over. This brief interval constituted his formal education in English.

With this meager help, his I.C.S. lesson became easier to understand and it wasn’t long before he had completed the course. With this came

also the realization that he now had a foundation of knowledge upon which to build a career.

He was advancing at the textile mill, but his mental scope had broadened -and he became more and more convinced of the fact that his life work was not in textile mills. He quit, and gained a varied experience in various machine shops. At the same time, his father and brothers had opened shooting galleries at night. Always interested in shooting, he soon became a good marksman.

It was during the World War that Mr. Garand submitted to the Navy department his design for a light machine gun. During the war rush, thousands of drawings and plans were being submitted but his, among the mass of others, attracted sufficient attention for him to be summoned to Washington. While his gun was not accepted in production, the efficiency of his model won him a job as tester with the Bureau of Standards. The salary was 1,800 dollars a year. Here again is proof of the fact that money does not mean a great deal to him, for he took the job because it appealed to him more than one which had been paying him nearly twice as much.

In 1919, the Army became interested in his work, and he was transferred to the Springfield arsenal with instructions to see what he could do with a semi-automatic rifle which would be . as steady as the old Spring-

field, and with faster, smoother, more . K. efficient action.

So, at Springfield, an unpretentious man works on. His salary is not small, but it is considerably less than his genius could command in private industry, and far less than his rifle would pay him in royalties if he had cared to release it for commercial manufacture.

When, in May, 1939, he was awarded the Pynchon medal, he accepted the honour on two conditions; one jvas that Brigadier General Stewart, superintendent of the Springfield arsenal, would go with him to the function, and the other was that he would not have to make a speech.

Back in 1905, when John Garand began his study of an I.C.S. course, he never dreamed how vital many of the things he studied would become to him. Little did he know then that the engineering principles he was learning day by day would be at some time directed to the science of ballistics. The course was doubly difficult for he knew little English. But he persevered and somehow from, that patient effort, all the latent ability of the man blossomed into successful fruition. John C. Garand did not be-

come a steam engineer, for his destiny lay in the perfection of firearms, but as he looks back on the past, he says: / “I owe much of what I have achieved to I.C.S. and their course. From it I procured the engineering and mathematical knowledge which played a vital part in the development of the Garand rifle. To young men who are looking forward to successful careers but who have not the necessary technical education, I advise the study of I.C.S, courses. Though

your life work may not turn out to be along the lines of the course you study, you will find it to your advantage to have at your hands the knowledge which can be gained from itspages. . With learning, you can create: many of your own opportunities.”