August 14 Sunday – In Elmira Sam wrote two letters to Franklin G. Whitmore. The first letter gave two paragraphs to the motor Paige was adding to the typesetter. The last dealt with the market, and a planned competition:

We’ve got the type-setter market all to ourselves, now, if we could only get the machine finished. Brusnahan has been [at] the Tribune again & examined those machines carefully & at his leisure; & he puts their best capacity at 2,000 ems an hour. If this is a fact which the Tribunists cannot get away from, the Paige machine is wholly without a competitor, & is quite easily worth fifty millions of dollars. I mean there is a market in the world for 5,000 machines now, without regarding the 5,000 that will be salable a very few years later on.

Don’t let Will give up his practice entirely, but freshen himself up two or three half-hours a week on that key-board. We shall have to challenge all machines to a money-forfeit contest, in New York, & Van might lack not only speed but nerve [MTP]. Note: Charles Van Schuyver, often referred to as “Van” in correspondence.

The second letter to Whitmore enclosed Charles Ethan Davis’ Aug. 11 letter, together with Sam’s concerns about the dynamo (motor), new drawings, a near forced sale of Beech Creek railroad bonds, and the Pratt & Whitney matter.

I’m not worrying about P & W any more; they will get done soon enough: it is those pitiless & everlasting drawings that I am sweating over [MTP].

Sam read over his 350 pages of MS on CY and was pleased it was a “bully book” so far [Aug. 15 to Hall and Webster].