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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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agreement. We ware anxious to have the agreement reached and no stoppage of work. That's what the Government was anxious to have done.

So I went down to the Department of Labor, and the press came in, and Lewis and his men filed in solemn as owls. You would have thought they were going to a funoral--faces long and gloomy, you know. The mine operators looked just about as gloomy, and they looked stern. You really could hardly believe that they were play-acting. They were acting the way the dramatic director would think that hard-hearted coal operators ought to look. That's the way they looked. They put on this grim look. This nice little man out at my house had been pleasant and cordial and amiable and polite as could be. He looked very stern and he scowled up his brows. And Lewis looked absolutely unapproachable.

I could hardly keep my face straight. I seemed so ridiculous to myself, you know, as I made a statement about how serious this matter was--what a very serious thing this was, and how the Government deplored any action which would stop work and stop operations in the miner, and so forth. The press was goggle-eyed, drinking it all in. I don't know whether it could be put over on them today or not. I think it could. You can put over anything on the Press, they're so dumb. I could hardly bear that they shouldn't have caught on to that. There were some bright boys there, too,





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