Meanwhile, I pointed out, my own company, United Aircraft, had from the beginning voluntarily stabilized its earnings at a figure based on the use of its own facilities and resources prior to the commencement of the United States aircraft production program. All these figures were, however, quite academic; they were simply estimated results of current operations based on an assumption that the war contracts might be terminated in an orderly manner. In the last war, no such thing had taken place; contracts had been closed out so brutally that, according to another National City Bank _Bulletin_, many companies had gone through the wringer and even the strongest, in the number of some sixty-six representative suppliers, had been forced to write down their apparent net worth by approximately one billion dollars, or 50 per cent. Our present “profit” was therefore but a temporary bookkeeping entry; no company could even guess where it would come out unless Congress proceeded with all speed to write new legislation that would facilitate orderly reconversion. While I developed this testimony, our staff circulated a summary of the figures among the men and women at the press table, some of whom had, no doubt, read the C.I.O. pamphlet charging us with having made 3,000 per cent. C.I.O. figures showed gross profit before taxes as a percentage of net worth and, while accurate enough, manifestly emphasized what wide variations can result from the mere definition of the naughty word “profit.” In continuing my testimony, I went on to point out that the aircraft industry, now the biggest industry, was a vital factor in our domestic economy and that the public interest as well as the worker’s interest demanded that we not upset the whole national picture through disorderly or even punitive procedure. By this we did not mean for a moment that our industry should be subsidized in any way; we hated subsidy because it tended to throttle technological progress. We had made rapid strides only because we had had rough going; in our struggle to exist at all we had been forced to conceive and create devices that would otherwise have never seen the light of day. What we asked of the government was that it make up its mind as to what it needed and then let us go back to cutting each other’s throats in that exciting way which had kept United States technology in the forefront of world progress. At this remark, I noted a stir among the newsmen and women; long accustomed to hearing special pleaders demand special privilege, they were taken aback by the aircraft industry’s expressed preference for competition. Such unheard-of conduct was news of the “man-bites-dog” variety.