The cable orders of 1914

1914 — 1918

War orders by cable from London: When the First World War opened, the foreign military trade that had begun with the government's 1864 order and the Boer War trials returned at industrial scale. The standard history of Studebaker, drawing on Erskine's company history of 1918, gives the arrival in one sentence: "At the outbreak of the First World War the orders came by cable from London: the British government's first orders included 3,000 transport wagons, 20,000 sets of artillery harness, and 60,000 artillery saddles, with ambulances and hundreds of cars bought through the London office; similar orders followed from France and Russia." It was, as the Studebaker section of this history notes, the last great war fought substantially with horse-drawn transport, and the wagon works supplied it as it had supplied the Union: in the seven years to 1918 the company sold 466,962 horse-drawn vehicles against 277,035 automobiles. The London office through which the ambulances and cars were bought was the automobile trade's bridgehead in Europe; the same office system, and the Canadian plant of the next entry, carried the company's exports through the peace that followed.

Sources:

1. Standard encyclopedia history of Studebaker, citing Albert Russel Erskine, History of the Studebaker Corporation (1918) — the British government's first orders (3,000 transport wagons, 20,000 sets of artillery harness, 60,000 artillery saddles), ambulances and hundreds of cars through the London office, and the French and Russian orders that followed.
2. Studebaker — the war-orders entry in full, with the 1911–1918 sales of 466,962 horse-drawn vehicles against 277,035 automobiles, cross-referenced and not retold here.