Vandiver Brown to Ernest Muehleck of Keasbey & Mattison on Gardner's Delayed Asbestosis Monograph (1944)

A one-page letter of December 15, 1944, from Vandiver Brown, Johns-Manville's secretary and attorney, to Ernest Muehleck, president of Keasbey & Mattison Company, one of the companies paying for Dr. Leroy Gardner's asbestos research at the Saranac Laboratory. Brown quotes Gardner's answer to Muehleck's inquiry: Gardner was still "unable to prepare the promised monograph on asbestosis" because he was short of staff, but was "still doing a considerable amount of experimentation on asbestosis." Brown writes that he is confident of Gardner's "good intentions" and expects "eventually" to see the results in writing.

What it shows

The sponsors had been funding Gardner's experiments since the 1936 agreement, and by late 1944 they were pressing for the written report. Brown also mentions that J-M wanted Gardner's help on "a problem we face in Southern California where diatomaceous earth is involved" (J-M's Lompoc operation). The thread continues in Brown's June 1945 letter to Muehleck.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

Johns-Manville's own chronology of what the company knew describes this document as follows:

Letter from Vandiver Brown to Muehleck (Keasby & Mattison) dated 12/15/44 in which Brown expresses his frustration at the tension between putting pressure on Gardner to complete his research and his recognition that "we cannot actually force him and if we press him too hard we might conceivably find ourselves with a report we do not like."

Editor's note: The chronology quotes Brown as writing "if we press him too hard we might conceivably find ourselves with a report we do not like." That sentence is not in this one-page letter, which is addressed to Keasbey & Mattison Co.; it may come from another document.