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soldier dig coal?’ And the next line is, ‘And so you put a bayonet behind these free Americans, do you?’” You could just hear John Lewis rolling it off. The country would shudder. The publicity would be awful. Our enemies would think, “Goody-good.”

I said to myself, “I just bet Lewis would never peep on this with the Department of the Interior. I bet he'll cooperate. I bet we can fix it.”

I thought it over very carefully, laid it all out on a piece of paper for myself so that I would be sure I wasn't missing anything in the chain of command and in the operations under the Department of the Interior. Of course, the mines still remained the property of the mine owners and the labor was still the miners, the United Mine Workers. There was still a contract between the United Mine Workers and the employers, but the employers no longer operated the mines. So whatever the contract was it was subject to such modifications as the government was willing to make for the period of its operation. Whatever the profits of the business are went back to the mine owners, didn't come to the government.

I thought it out very carefully, I thought about Harold Ickes. I thought what a good reputation he had in the country. Whether he was a good administrator or not, I didn't know then, and to this day I don't know. He had a good reputation as an administrator then, and he still has.