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committee he brought in the representatives of the farmers organizations, labor organization and so on. That used to meet in the new wing of the white House where Byrnes had his office. He had James Patton of the Farmers Union on it, Ed O'Neal, and Albert Goss. Then he had Philip Murray and William Green. He also had some government people - the Secretary of Labor, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Commerce. That got reorganized once. Davis was there at the beginning and I think got dropped out on the second reorganization. I think that the functions that we had been trying to set up in the Federal Reserve building were absorbed into the functions of this outfit that Byrnes set up. Those functions were never very clear anyway. It was the predecessor to the office of Economic Stabilization and it never was much.

This committee thought it was very important. Everything was secret and super-secret, all that kind of thing, but actually no pattern of action eventuated that could be traced to them. Farm agencies would fight with the government. Labor agencies would fight with them or some other part of the government. I could never make out that the farm agency leaders - O'Neal, Goss or Patton - were fighting Wickard. They seemed to be on good terms. They certainly were not fighting him in





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