Salt Lake Tribune | 1903-02-02 | Page 1 | Citizen-Soldiering

CITIZENSOLDIERING In Accord With New Militia Law the national Guard Will Be Supplied With Regular Army Rifle Washington Feb IIn accordance with the terms of the new militia law recently enacted by Congress the entire en-tire citizen soldiery of the country Is I to be supplied with the regular army service rifle The Slate militia organizations organ-izations aggregate approximately lln 000 men nearly double the number in the regular army establishment They will be furnished their new arms as rapidly as they can be manufactured by the National armory at Springfield Mass In addition to this the War department depart-ment Is Installing a plant at Rock Island Is-land arsenal for the manufacture of the service rifle though It will be sometime some-time before it will be ready for work The department has on hand a large reserve supply of rifles sulllclent almost al-most to equip the militia but will rely mainly on tho production of the armories ar-mories as the officials prefer not to draw on the reserve too heavily