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  When I became head of Industrial Haulage sales in 1940, I knew almost nothing about mining locomotives, having been chosen primarily for my diesel-electric locomotive experience.  But the mining locomotives were a fundamental part of the business and although they were about to be eclipsed by the diesels, I had to learn something about them in order to handle my new job intelligently.  And so I did what I could to enhance my knowledge of them and the NEMA activity was helpful to a degree.  But I was a novice at best, never having even been in an underground mining operation.  My first good opportunity to devote a few days to getting familiar with competitors' equipment and beginning to get a little feel of the business and the people involved with it, came in the spring of 1941 when I attended the "Coal Show."  This was sponsored by the American Mining Congress, which I guess might be described as the trade association of the mine operators.  The Coal Show was an annual affair which was held at some huge convention hall where the suppliers could and were expected to have displays of their wares.  This 1941 event was held in an enormous enclave in Cincinnati and attended by thousands of mine operators and suppliers representatives as well as interested fringe individuals with some sort of axe to grind.  We had a large exhibit which included a 26-inch high gathering locomotive as I recall and this created quite a sensation because to build an 8-ton locomotive standing only about two feet above the rail was quite a trick.  My memory tells me it was made for the Jewel Ridge Coal Company for operation in an extremely low-height mine in the Kentucky coal field.  Our GE exhibit included all sorts of GE products sold to the coal industry which ran the whole gamut from lamp bulbs for miners' head lamps through power-conversion equipment like mercury-arc rectifiers and on through to the underground locomotive.  So I went to Cincinnati to enhance my education and it was enhanced in more ways than one in the next few days.
  Our GE social headquarters was at the Netherlands Plaza Hotel.  Our "hospitality room" was located here.  In fact, I guess just about every supplier worth his weight in hell-raising had one at the Netherlands Plaza.  GE had a large delegation in Cincinnati made up of product people like me, general industrial sales representatives from Schenectady, and almost all the local sales gang from the districts dealing with the coal mines.  And this entourage had its duties the two most important of which were manning the exhibit at the Hall and manning the room at the hotel.  Of course, there was one transcendent duty engulfing all others: taking care of the customers.  I'd been to a lot of conventions and similar get-togethers but this one was in a class by itself as far as my experience was concerned.  Perhaps I was still simply young and innocent and just hadn't recognized in the past what was going on around me but at this one you were powerless t o mistake it unless somehow you'd been anesthetized and kept that way with a periodic booster shot.  And I can say honestly that I didn't like it.

Transcription Notes:
Left extra space character in phrase "were powerless t o mistake" as it was typed in original