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responsible and accustomed government officer would think right to do. I don't think that that one episode ruined the whole show, but I know there were other episodes of the same sort. After a very little while they all learned and Knudsen began to take almost anything that Hillman wanted. Hillman could always beat him out in an argument. Knudsen was not an intellectual fighter. That is, he couldn't argue a matter out. So if anybody gave him a good, stiff argument, he was lost, was gone, would agree to whatever they wanted if it wasn't something that was obviously crazy and wrong. And in this case I think he and Hillman agreed that their duty was to get the goods made—how? who? by whom? whether all the little niceties of public contract were observed or not, didn't matter much. They had to get the goods made.

I think more and more of that was done, not by the Office of Production Management necessarily, but all through the government, before we got through than anybody realized. Of course, it was by that kind of thing—just do it any-how—that a great deal of the speed-up finally took place. But it was difficult, and, of course, it created problems for us all the time.