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I liked the insurance company men who came in to appear before us. Many of them had become my friends. We were all on good terms.
I didn't think any such relationships could ever be built up again anywhere else, and certainly not in Washington. It proved to be true - they couldn't be. That relationship between the Secretary of Labor and the insurance companies and the insurance companies' local representatives, who came in on compensation cases, the relationship between the Secretary of Labor and the members of the Associated Industries, the relationship between the Secretary of Labor and the local trade union men, who were then not organized into great, overwhelming political pressure groups, but were frankly the cigar makers, the bakers, the carpenters, the stationary engineers, the relationship of the Secretary of Labor with the unorganized medical men of the State of New York, whose advice I had sought with regard to certain medical problems in workmen's compensation and in industrial hygiene, were fine, productive, good relationships. My relationships with the employees of the Department of Labor were good, friendly, productive and just right. I was sitting pretty.
In short, I did not want to go to Washington. I felt intuitively that you could never create that situation again, and certainly you couldn't create it in Washington.
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