Viewing page 95 of 291

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Erie, Pa.
Aug. 30, '38
Pretty well cleaned up the New Haven odds and ends today except the westbound freight test calculations. Now Maurice wants me to figure out a cheap 300HP 55 ton switcher with a Cooper-Bessemer EN-6 engine. Although the diesel set-up is supposed to be made with us hand and glove with Alco and Walter Hedley the commander-in-chief in New York as chief contact man, Maurice evidently intends to go his sweet way and buck Walter whenever he can. A hell of a way to do business. We should all pull together and know clearly what we're pulling for. Also there is a hullabaloo about the New Haven development running over the estimate 20%, reducing a 2 1/2% reduction below factory cost estimate to 1% over the overall estimate. Bob Walsh wrote a memorandum explaining why their development was about 90% above their estimate so they could convince Jake Schuler they should be credited with the extra development, which Maurice had already agreed to. The thing got into Emmett's hands & he sends it to Muir, slyly taking a crack at the Commercial Dept. for giving away our shirts as he thinks, all this in retaliation for Andrew's repeated jibes at the factory for overrunning costs. So now Maurice is up in arms and the fur is flying. My opinion is that the estimate was overrun principally because it was too "wishful" and too low, not because everyone didn't know what we were up against but because the human mind is optimistic when it realizes benefits are to be derived from optimism. Walter Harris gets me in to give him ammunition to defend Walsh's explanation and Maurice is after me to furnish him shots to

Transcription Notes:
Reviewed