December 30/09
Mr. Lorenzo Benedict,
Worcester Salt Company,
168 Duane Street, City.
My dear Mr. Benedict:
For your information, I am quoting from a letter received from John Woodruff this morning:
"By the way, our annual Stockholders meeting comes the third Wednesday in January, or the 19th. I will send out notices tomorrow to that effect. I think it is important, most important, for you to be here and if that date is not convenient we will have to consider an adjournment. I hope Mr. English will come. You might suggest it when you see him. We will at that time arrange for the issue of stock. I have it fixed up with Page.
With 3 machines gone today, we have shipped 30 this month and should get two more before Saturday.
Nothing new in the way of orders. John leaves tonight for B.R.&P. That situation is most puzzling. It has acquired a more hopeful aspect from that fact that we have had a man on the job doing nothing but take records of the cutting done by the air machines. The people at the mine are bucking us at every turn and put it up to our machine to cut as much as the air machine or get out. They have always represented that the air machines averaged 100 feet per shift of 10 hours. We soon found we could not average more than 90 feet under the best conditions but now we find that the air machines barely average 75 feet per 10 hours, so we are much encouraged. Our man is most trustworthy who took the records so his figures are to be relied upon. With these figures for a weapon, John is going after them hard, especially as they have been blocking our runner in every way possible for the past 10 days so he cannot get enough territory to work in to keep busy more than half the time. Either the people there have been bought up or they are too lazy to relish the job of changing from the old to the new. As a last resort, we have Robinson, the President, who favors electricity but who is now abroad."