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many members or not that year. They and other trade unionists helped us and were in this conference. I got a number of them in.
We got the Associated Industries in. We got the Merchants Association of New York in, and that was a great help. They were a business men's organization. They had a mitigating effect upon the opposition of the Associated Industries. I don't remember all the people that we had in it, but anyhow it got to be kind of a habit to call this conference some time early in autumn after everybody got back from vacation.
I would say, “We've been thinking about certain amendments and certain bills that we think ought to be introduced in the Legislature in the coming session, but before we go further, or before I even propose them to the Governor, we'd like to canvass the thing with you and have an open, informal expression of opinion.”
By that technique we got a lot of minor matters reduced to agreement. We'd get, “That's all right. They'll do.” These were small improvements, particularly those that had to do with procedure or method of doing things. We got great support from the manufacturers for one thing that we had to do. That was that we wanted the power to proceed against employers who did not carry workmen's compensation.
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