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proposals, and that each of us would see anyone or any group of them who wished to see us the next day in our own offices to discuss further details. In the meantime we'd ask them to come back again in two weeks, or at some future date, after we had had the opportunity to go into the practical aspects of the matter. Then we adjourned.

The next day Ickes, I know, was full of visitors, and so was I, from this group. We had a stream of them all day long coming in singly, in twos, in larger groups. Each one of them wanted to tell you privately a slightly different version because he wanted to blame some of his competitors. He couldn't do that when they all trying to be one band of brothers in the public hearing, but each of them blamed somebody else. They would say that if a certain company would get out of the market, it would be better. They could never produce coal. No help should be given to them. “We've got coal here and if we could get ‘this, this, and this' we could produce some coal, could hell some coal and could give employment to some people, but we can't when we're competing with that outfit over there.”

It was a very interesting thing. I finally conceived it my duty to persuade them, as I think Ickes did, to hold onto their industry and not to let it go. We succeeded in doing it quite successfully. I remember pointing out to them that