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197 

Colonel Reaber was in charge of the Signal Corps at that time, that is the aviation portion of it, and after discussing the situation pro and con, we decided that the best thing for us to do would be to build a single seat speed scout.
     
I stayed in Dayton long enough to produce this machine and then [[strikethrough]] took [[/strikethrough]] shipped it [[strikethrough]] down [[/strikethrough]] to Washington and put in an appearance at the Signal Corps headquarters.  I found [[strikethrough]] that [[/strikethrough]] Billy Mitchell was in charge. Colonel Reaber had fallen down stairs and had very nearly broken his neck. He was out of the picture. Billy Mitchell informed me that he did not want the machine. As a matter of fact, they did not want anything that we could produce. He was thoroughly sold on the Curtiss Organization. So we used the machine at our flying field [[strikethrough]] out [[/strikethrough]] at Mineola, Long Island. I had rented [[strikethrough]] Mineola [[/strikethrough]] this field for three years for something like $2500 a year and we had the whole field, part of which is now the Army field at Camp Mitchell. We had a number of very prominent visitors come down and try to get part of the field.
     
I received an offer that appealed to me and I resigned from the Wright Company and persuaded Mr. Hagar to settle with Orville Wright at the same time. Orville never knew that I had put the pressure on. I didn't tell him for fear that he would resent it. He was just as glad as I was to see the matter closed.
     
[[strikethrough]] While everything was going smoothly at the flying field and the school, I received an offer from an old friend of mine to come over with him. He was trying to promote a circus and wanted to put it on motor trucks. As he knew nothing about motors or motor trucks, he wanted me to undertake that job. It immediately appealed to me as being very feasible and could be accomplished and perhaps solve some of the problems of the getting a circus from one place to another. The railroads for the big circuses do it very nicely but there are slips and sometimes they have to miss two or three days. [[/strikethrough]]