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paying the lane owner the royalties on his underground rights, were all in the American coal mining situation. It was part or a world-wide difficulty on mining.

So these people were good and depressed when the financial depression hit them. The result was that they were nearly frantic, and, as I said, seemed to have a neurotic depression. They came in to see the President very early - within the first two weeks. I don't know who got them in to see the President, but they came in. A body of at least thirty or forty of them came and they said to him that they were in practically total despair and that something would have to be done. They could no longer run the coal industries. They had many propositions that they wanted to make and the government would have to undertake something or other for them.

Well, the President was very busy. Everything in the world was piling up under him. It was a very astonishing situation to him. He said that he hadn't time to hear them as it was obviously complicated, so he would appoint the Secretary of the Interior, who after all had no jurisdiction over mines, but had a Bureau of Mines within his department, and among whose concerns were the natural resources of the country, and the Secretary of Labor, who was responsible for the employment of working people among the miners whom they said they could never employ again, to look over the