"We do not seem to be getting through to the operating departments regarding the necessity for cost reduction. I have here last month's breakdown on the Bunker Hill substation 115 KV installation. Most of you have seen it already, I think. I had it sent around. Now—"
The analysis continued for some ten minutes to conclude with an explosion:
"We've got to impose a ten per cent across the board cut on operating expenses."
One of the listeners, more alert than the rest, asked, "That go for salaries?"
"For personnel making more than eight hundred dollars a month it does."
There was a moment of shocked silence.
"You can't make that stick," one of the supervisors said. "Half my best men will be out tomorrow looking for better offers—and finding them, too."
"I'm just passing on what I was told."
The men in the room shuffled and muttered under their breaths.
"O.K., that's the way they want it," one of the supervisors said.