These terms received widespread acceptance, although they allowed no prospective profits, and thereupon the various districts became scenes of great activity as the ordnance officers worked with the contractors to expedite the presentation of settlement claims by the latter. Inspectors and agents employed by the district boards checked manufacturers’ inventories, and boxed and set aside materials to be delivered to the Government, while district accountants audited the costs statements. Each field agent of a district board was made responsible for a few specific claims. He stood at the contractor’s elbow and helped him rough out his claim into proper form. A spirit of amiability prevailed. For many reasons the contractor wished to make his settlement as quickly as possible, and the district agent was there to tell him what items in his claim were indisputable, and what ones were likely to be contested, thereby holding up the final settlement. When the district agent and the contractor had agreed as to a claim, they submitted it informally to one of the members of the district claims board for his opinion. If he thought his board would be unlikely to allow certain items, the contractor could usually be persuaded to omit such items. Claims prepared under such conditions presented little difficulty to the various claims boards, and most of them went through to settlement without a hitch in the proceedings. Most contractors were willing to forego their technical rights in order to save the Government from paying for useless production, but a few were obdurate. One man, working under a contract with a thirty-day termination clause, deliberately increased his rate of production five times in order to collect a maximum amount from the Government. When the Ordnance Department discovered his plan, it breached the contract outright and allowed the producer to take his grievance, if he continued to nurse one, into the courts. A rare instance of this sort, however, is cited only to show by contrast the prevalent attitude of industrial coöperation with the Government. Numerous producers omitted from their claims many items the validity of which could probably have been sustained in the future negotiations, but which were, however, subject to close scrutiny and therefore a factor of delay in the settlements.