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Erie, Penna.
Monday, Nov. 4, 1940.
Today was rather unsatisfactory:

1.) At our morning ^[[mail]] meeting, Whitey announced that I was the boss of the Industrial Loco Section as of today. This sounded fine but certainly meant nothing unless he followed it up by some action with Shap which I waited for on pins and needles all day. Henry and Cash agreed with me fully on this point. Finally I went in to see Whitey about 4 PM and said, "Now, look here, Whitey. You and I had an agreement on this Shapter business." Whitey replied immediately, "Yes, I know we did. What about it?" I asked him if he wasn't going to carry it out. Then he began to hem and haw, looked for the agreement, couldn't find it, said he would carry it out if I insisted but [[line]]. The upshot of it was that Whitey admitted he saw the thing somewhat differently than he did before (Sept. 19 when we discussed my "ticket" and he agreed to it) and felt it would be a mistake to talk to Shap and me together - preferred to call in Shap alone, Jake alone, Eddie alone and even Jenny alone and tell them from now on I was to be the boss. His claim was he didn't want to aggravate Shap to the point where Shap would make such a scene he would have to fire him - although he would be "sustained" if he did so. I inquired about an official letter to the districts, etc. establishing the change and Whitey said that was unnecessary because Shap was not officially head of the section - I reminded him of the organization directory and he insisted it showed nothing - later I check it and found otherwise,