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Nat sound: WS hearing room with Sen. Claude Pepper (D-FL) of the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations questioning Howard Hughes, SOT "Mr. Hughes, did you enter into the contract with the idea of making a profit out of it?" / SOT Hughes, "I don't see how I could have, Senator, because it was specifically precluded. I may have stated in the contract that no profit could be made, it was obvious that a loss would have to be sustained because in any governmental work, the government always disallows certain items, now generally the manufacturer has a chance to make those up out of profit, in this particular case, the contract stated there could be no profit. So it's as plain as the nose on your face that we had to lose money on the deal" / SOT Pepper, "Did you make any profit on this cargo plane contract?" / SOT Hughes, "Well, Senator, you know very well I not only didn't make anything, I have lost $7,200,000 to date" / Pepper, "Will you repeat again your statement of yesterday, that it is correct that you not only lost $7,200,000, that you put a certain amount of personal effort into the construction plane over a certain period of time?" / Hughes, "I put a great deal more than I mentioned yesterday. Yesterday I said I spent between 18 and 20 hours a day for between six months to a year. Now that was for concentrated heavy design work on this plane, but from that point on, I spent hours upon hours every day for years on this project and I'm still spending a great deal of time on it. I put the sweat of my life into the thing. I have my reputation rolled up in it and I have stated several times that if it's a failure, I probably will leave this country and never come back and I mean it"