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was impressive. We all spoke to Judge Cardozo afterwards. Then the members of the families went downstairs and the members of the Cabinet remained. We had a brief kind of a Cabinet meeting. It was the first formal assembling. I wouldn't say that it was a Cabinet meeting in any true sense of the word. It was a gathering rather, in which the President outlined, more coherently than I had heard it outlined before, just what this banking crisis was and what the legal problems involved were. He spoke about his order to close all banks and to stop all payments on a temporary basis. The legal problems underlying that were very considerable.

Of course, Homer Cummings had been sworn in as Attorney General. It was understood that it was a temporary arrangement. William Woodin had been sworn in as Secretary of the Treasury. That was not understood to be temporary. There were other lawyers there that night who were sent for. They weren't in the room with the Cabinet, but were sent for. At least one or two other people came in at some point, explained what the legal problems were, what the legal opinion was, how it could be done, and so on. The question was over the use of the Trading With the Enemy Act. It involved parts of the law and the proprieties of government with which I was totally unfamiliar. It was