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preliminary talk with Hillman and Lewis was suggested to them as a matter of easing their way into these negotiations which obviously must come. Of course, the greatest part of the problem in Sloan's mind had become the question that the men were still in the factories. They hadn't left. They still had “seized” the factories, as he called it. He had been saying that he wouldn't deal with them until they left the factory. They had been saying to me, and I had been repeating it to him and other General Motors officials, that they wouldn't leave the plant, and their union wouldn't direct them to leave the plant, until they had some assurance that they could negotiate. When there was assurance, which the elder statesmen of the CIO were willing to under-write, then the union would tell them to leave the plant. When there was a real assurance, made between men of good faith, that they would negotiate, then the union would direct them to leave the plants. That was the way it stood.

So the problems that we discussed on this particular day when they came down were not what was to be the settlement, but what would be the basis of negotiation. However, Sloan was very anxious to commit me and the Department of Labor to what the actual settlement would