Vandiver Brown to Sumner Simpson Forwarding Dr. Gardner's Letter of January 6 (1944)

A one-page letter of January 10, 1944, from Vandiver Brown, Johns-Manville's secretary, to Sumner Simpson, president of Raybestos-Manhattan, headed "Re: Dr. Gardner's Asbestos Dust Experiments." Brown enclosed a copy of a letter from Dr. Leroy Gardner of the Saranac Laboratory dated January 6, "which will be self-explanatory." The enclosure is not in the file; the index describes it as explaining that wartime staff shortages kept Gardner from setting a date for his final report.

What it shows

The companies paying for Gardner's experiments had been waiting for his report since the late 1930s; in February 1943 he had sent them an outline of the planned monograph. Simpson's reply to this letter was "He certainly is slow" (January 13, 1944).

In Johns-Manville's index

Johns-Manville's attorneys indexed the Sumner Simpson Papers. Their index describes this document as follows:

Transmittal letter for correspondence from Dr. Gardner dated 1/6/44. Gardner's letter explains that a completion date for the final report can not be set, due to the staffing shortage caused by the war. Assures that his intentions are "still of the best".

Related documents

• Sumner Simpson to Vandiver Brown Acknowledging Dr. Gardner's Letter of January 6 (1944)
• Leroy U. Gardner to Sumner Simpson Asking to Review the Manheim X-Ray Films (1944)

About this copy

This is document 05423-05424 of the Sumner Simpson Papers, as numbered in the collection's index.