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to go to fires. He adored fire departments, fire engines and fire apparatus. To be sure, he persuaded them to get good apparatus and it's a great improvement. In my little town in Haine we have now a chemical fire extinguisher that comes out when we telephone to say that we've got a fire in the barn, or in the grass. They come down not with ahose. There's never any water in the country. They come down with this great big arrangement with buckets of chemicals hanging on the side of it. They proceed to dump chemicals on the fire and they have much better luck putting it out than they ever did with the old hose. Well, La Guardia is largely responsible for the waking up of the fire-fighting manufacturing companies, the Boards of Selectmen, town fathers, city planners of small cities, to get themselves some modern fire-fighting equipment.

Even at this first Cabinet meeting he had a lot of talking to do because he had some very fixed ideas about how many cities there were, how many towns there were, in this country that didn't have adequate fire-fighting apparatus. He already knew that. He thought that was the single greatest hazard. He took up a lot of time at that Cabinet meeting. I don't remember that he came to Cabinet meeting regularly thereafter, but he came occasionally.

After the war began the President got the idea of asking some of the important government officials who weren't in