Good Fences Make Good Scrap, Unfortunately

I've always assumed the scrap metal drives of World War II rounded up tin cans and miscellaneous junk, but as these photos from the Retronaut make clear, it was a lot more than that: People destroyed perfectly good fences whose workmanship was impossible to replace.


This one is the fence around the Massachusetts state house.










I wonder how much of this destruction was from war fever and how much was incipient Modernism, seeing no other value in these ornate railings and gates?