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Whenever we would try to devise or plan legislation that we thought would meet a particular situation, somebody would raise the question, “You'll never get that by the Court.” All of us were advised by our legal advisers that these two decisions on interstate commerce and on due process, the Adkins case and Hammer v. Dagenhart were controlling, and they controlled a very large area of possible action. I seem to remember that there was some doubt about the Securities and Exchange Act. There were certain things that were written into it as purely constitutional safeguards to meet the known objections of the Supreme Court.

So there was plenty of tossing out of statements like, “Well, the Supreme Court's against us,” or that sort of thing. “What'll we do with the Supreme Court?” and so on.

It had been thought that the NRA, by making the agreements to control wages, hours and other matters on goods that were in interstate commerce, or intrastate, as the case might be, just agreements, contracts, had solved the problem. It was thought that you could do by contract between Mr. A. and Mr. B., one in Illinois and one in Idaho, what you couldn't require them to do by a law. That was discussed at the time that it was