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Willie was due to call for me at 4:10 PM so I could catch the 6:05 PM for Washington. At 3 PM Whitey informed me I was due in St. L's office at 3:10 PM to set a piece on the 8" railway gun mount with St. L. Those were about the extent of my instructions except Whitey didn't agree to changing the overhead from the normal 221% to 155%, the actual on the facilities used. He showed me also a letter from John Anderson giving Sales Committee approval to the Transportation Dept. handling the work here, which sort of pushed St.L. out in the cold on some of the rather high handed work he has been doing. Whitey told him over the phone, "I'm boss now." Whitey certainly swung that deal neatly.

I sat in a conference in Disco's office this morning on the 8" mount only because Fred Brehob happened to tip me off to it. So I went into this thing not entirely unprepared but nearly so. Disco and Miller had been to Watertown and seen a mount and discussed it with them over there. St. L. had had discussions with the Army on it. I was the little boy out in the cold as far as any background went. But we finally set $83,000+ as the figure, which they thought was good. I had my doubts if it wasn't too high. Then Emmet came in and began to talk big, questioning this and criticizing that but it appeared he would see the light eventually and I had to beat it about 4:15 then. I hated to leave but St. L. agreed that the $83000+ was okay & it shouldn't be any more, so I felt I had done all I could under