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the National Labor Relations Act, although more than a year went by before that came into being.

One of the peculiarities of the coal situation at this time was that on account of the fact that the coal industry was one of the most seriously depressed industries, probably totally depressed, a phase of total discouragement had come over the owners of the coal industry. They almost believed that they were in an impossible situation, that they could never recover.

The reasons for that were that not only were they caught by the financial depression that had caught everybody in every industry and by the fact that other industries being down were not buying from them, but also because the coal industry itself, as an industry, long before the depression hit was in a chaotic decline. I say “chaotic decline,” because it was not an orderly decline. The coal industry in this country during the boom years, and during all the years of American exploitation had overdeveloped certain areas and certain openings. Capital had been invested in a more or less ignorant way in certain coal openings which proved to be not very good - that is, not to hold out very long as high-grade coal openings. This was in the period when every American was trying to get rich quick, and that sort of thing went on for a good fifty years in this country. People found coal