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under such circumstances so that it would not be assumed by the press or others that the President was getting involved in the automobile strike.

Sloan said, No, pretty flatly after our meeting on Inauguration Day. I, of course, reported that to the President and to Murphy. As a matter of fact, I left some doors open. I never let anybody say no without having some agreement to reopen the question. So we parted on perfectly good terms.

I was trying to get the men out of factories, but I recognized that you couldn't get them out unless you could hold out some kind of bait, unless you could hold out something that was either a promise, or an agreement, or a line of thinking that had been agreed to. Something might have been accomplished if we could have said to the men, “The employers will meet you at such and such a date.” But the employers wouldn't say that at that January 20th meeting. Later on they had to say that after John Lewis put his foot in the situation. The employers could have settled it with less humiliation if they had done right away, early, than if they had waited for all this long, drawn-out disaster. It was really terrible, got to be awful.

The employers went back to their place of business