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if invited, but that they could also go on the direction of the Secretary of Labor. I delegated the right to exercise my right to the head of the Conciliation Service, but I found I had to exercise it myself, because Kerwin could never bring himself to send them. I found very soon that I was doing most of the sending. Somebody would telegraph me that here we were in the midst of depression and these men were out on strike, and couldn't I do something? I'd find that there was nothing locally and I would dispatch one of our conciliators out there, at least to find out the situation, find out what was the matter, and perhaps make some moves toward conciliation.

The conciliation Service, as established by William B. Wilson, had very strong relationships with the AF of L, and particularly with the AF of L as it operates in Washington from its national office. That doesn't mean that they didn't have relations with the locality too, but they had rather constant ones with the national office. They were social relations rather than official. The “boys” from the AF of L used the Conciliation Service office as a hang-out. This, I gathered, was an old habit that had started way back at the beginning. That was partly because many of the conciliators were former labor union officials - really most of them were organizers, or officials of either local