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the members of the committee, separately as well as together, by twos, by threes, by ones, anyway he wanted to. He was to analyze all of the suggestions, all of the recommendations, all of the prejudices, all of the desires of the members of the committee, and then to report to the President what ought to be done. That was a committee that, while sincere, was so sincere that it couldn't arrive at a conclusion that satisfied people politically. I speak of this because I remember it in great detail. I was a member of the committee, and I have very, very fixed views about what ought to be done. I'll go into that later.
At any rate, the President appointed a good many committees. Many of them were set up not to make a discovery of something new, evaluate new ideas and form a program, but were merely formed to be a kind of listening post to find out what was being thought about, what was being talked about, what the people of the South, North, or East thought about this, that or the other thing that was in the public eye, and to have a kind of practical, although superficially arrived at, suggestion of what to do or not to do. Some of the committees were appointed to take the heat off the President and transfer it to some other spot, particularly when there was pressure.
For instance, the President appointed Ickes and me to be a committee to meet and deal with the coal operators who
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