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Erie, Pa.
Wednesday, July 19,1939
Spent the morning at the office trying to get caught up. I have the Maine Central Report to write and the AIEE paper on electric braking is beginning to lurk in the back of my mind as October starts to draw nigh with alarming swiftness. Got Cooper to agree to take the AIEE Membership Committee chairmanship which is one more job done on that. Maurice is out in Omaha with Lynch trying to come to an agreement with the U.P. on what has to be done to the units here. In the meantime the two cabs sit on horses down in Bldg.10 like a couple of ghosts for the shut down is now on and only a couple of lonely looking mechanics and wiremen are occupied on them in an otherwise dead shop. It really is depressing to go down there. Apparently Maurice is on the skids since Whitey took over. The U.P. is the only assignment he has and Miss Germond is engaged in clearing out his files. There are no more section heads and Whitey is reputed to have told Andy that one thing wrong at Erie was that he had had Maurice hanging around his neck like a millstone for ten years. So what happens to Maurice no one knows. Presumably he is still Asst. Engineer of the Dept. but as Cash is pretty well eclipsed now even as Engineer, it doesn't mean much. There are rumors of rearranging the offices - just what that means nobody quite knows but upheaval is evidently in the making. Whitey did one sensible thing Monday. He told Bearce he thought Shapter ought to have a hand in the new small locomotive publicity. Bearce said, "Well, you know Shap." Whitey replied," No, I don't know Shap, I only know he has more contacts with industrial customers