sent five days later that compared to the other marbles submitted for consideration Yule "fit pre-eminently for a structure of the character of the Lincoln Memorial". The contract for Yule marble was awarded 14 March 1914. The contract was the most expensive and most demanding in the history of Yule marble at $1,080,000. The marble came out of Quarry 3, with the first shipment leaving Marble on 25 May 1914 and the final on 16 June 1916. The high standards resulted in a high rejection rate, yet the contract was completed 5 months ahead of schedule. Only a small amount of the marble quarried ever reached the finishing mill. The amount of rejection is based on summary statements given by the company president J.F. Manning. In June 1914, Manning estimated that a monthly quarrying of would yield to of acceptable marble. In 1915, Manning stated sometimes less than 10% of the quarried marble was shipped to the Memorial site. Once delivered to the mill site, marble blocks for other than the columns were taken to Shop 3 after being sawed into multiple pieces with a wire saw and the gang saws in one of the two mills. The wire saw and 20 of the 30 gangs saws were cutting nothing but Memorial marble 24 hours a day in May 1914. Marble for the 38 columns was offloaded in front of Shop 4. Each column comprised 11 drums and the top piece, with each of the 418 marble drums taking more than 18 hours to fashion. Bust: 1916 to 1921 The bust came barely one month after the final June 1916 shipment of marble for the Lincoln Memorial when the company went into receivership on 18 July 1916 and ceased operations 15 April 1917. The bust was caused by many factors such as the loss of skilled foreign-born craftsmen who returned to their native country to fight in World War I and a decline in the demand for marble brought about by the war. But the main cause was the huge debt incurred with the development of the integrated operation during 1905–1907. Even though the quarry had received a lot of contracts and some very lucrative, the operation (quarry, mill site and railroad) never made enough profit to pay off the start-up funding. A final disposition of the quarry was not completed until 4 April 1921 due to various groups vying