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One December 20th, we got the great news that we were to receive an order from the New Haven for ten diesel-electric switchers and I'd been selected to handle the job. I think that Maurice Guynes had handled this proposition because I can remember nothing about it while I was busying myself with the Illinois Central. I took my hat off to Maurice for in spite of opposition and criticism, he hammered this job through by creating a new and less-expensive design, and landed the business. The day of the standardized locomotive had not yet arrived although it was just around the corner--and I mean [[underlined]] just [[/underlined]]. Alco was swinging into it as was EMD but it hadn't taken root yet to the point where a road like the New Haven couldn't buy what they wanted even if they had to pay a premium for it. And what Maurice sold what was a custom job all right and involved frills of coordination among many interested parties that today sound almost ludicrous. But not then. I was thrilled to be given this assignment and swore that I'd give it all I had in an effort to make it a financial as well as engineering and performance success. My attitude was to be like this: "Is this thing right and if so can't it be done better?" I thought it was a good attirude to take on everything. It required the smashing of mental laziness and I felt if I could do that, I should have taken a long step forward. I'd found that usually when I really got down to business and worked my mind hard and conscientiously on a job, I got somewhere with it. Having made the New Haven report the previous year, I felt especially happy about the business. While the report wasn't responsible for our getting the business, I felt that it hadn't hindered and perhaps had contributed a little. Apparently the thing about all of it that pleased us the most, was to see General Motors squeezed out completely. This seemed to prove that they were beatable after all.
However, it took more than one swallow to make a summer and General Motors was not going to be beaten in the long run. At this point, they had bought Electro-Motive and had taken on their staff including Dick Dilworth and Hamilton, the founder, and were setting up a huge plant at LaGrange, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, to produce not only locomotives but also electrical equipment, which in the earliest stages they bought from us and then proceeded to copy, particularly the traction motor, which was our GE716. With their almost unlimited resources and their vast reciprocity with the railroads, they weren't going to take second place and they moved ahead rapidly in spite of almost unbelievable troubles with engines and electrical for a long time, the correction of which must have required enormous outlays of money and service attention. But most of this was ahead of us in 1935 and we celebrated our snaring all of the New Haven switcher order in the face of GM competition. Another point was that with big plants in Lynn, Bridgeport and Pittsfield, we had quite a reciprocical (reciprocal) clout with the New Haven ourselves which didn't hurt.

Transcription Notes:
'attirude' is the authors typo, transcribed as author typed it per instructions 2. Reviewed