Moisture content in the coating of an electrode is known to cause defects such as porosities, fish eyes and cracks in the weld metal, however, quantitative relationship between them is not clearly understood. In this study widely consumed and the most common type of arc welding rods such as ilmenite and low hydrogen type were chosen for the investigation, and attempts were made to correlate the relationship between the mechanical properties and gas contents when welding was carried out with electrodes of various moisture contents. As the relative humidity changed from 70% to 92%, it was determined that moisture content to reach saturation was in the range of 0.6~6.8%. As the moisture content in the electrode coating was increased, the amount of gaseous components (H, O, N) in the weld metal was accordingly increased, especially diffusible hydrogen showed prominent effect, i.e. it increased proportionally to the increase of the moisture content. The mechanical properties of the weld metal was observed to become more inferior as the diffusible hydrogen was greater. It was determined for ilmenite type of electrode that the increase of hydrogen content was approximately 1.8ml per unit weight percent increase of moisture and also tensile strength resulted lowering from $45.3kg/ extrm{mm}^2$ to $42.7kg/ extrm{mm}^2$ as moisture content increased from 0.7% to 6.8%. For low hydrogen type the increase of the hyrogen was about 2.4ml per unit percent of moisture and tensile strength decreased from $63.0kg/ extrm{mm}^2$ to $53.8kg/ extrm{mm}^2$ particularly in the region of moisture content 0.1~4.2%.