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hardly bear not talking about, I did share a few brilliant sentences with the President just to cheer him up a little. As an exercise in total vituperation I never saw anything equal to it.
Wayne Morse, as a public member of the War Labor Board and a lawyer, undertook to write the letter which would explain to Mr. Harold Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior, his inferior position with regard to the terms and conditions of work in the mines. He wrote it in his best style. Mr. Harold Ickes, receiving this letter, replied to it in his best style, but Mr. Ickes was so wrought up over the War Labor Board's having the nerve, the presumption, the impertinence, to tell him what he, as the coal controller of the United States and the general authority in charge of the coal mines of the United States, should say, do, and garee to with the workers, that he couldn't keep in his seat about it and he had to telephone to me. He telephoned to me to relieve his mind. He said, “I've Just had the most impertinent letter from that fellow of yours!”
I said, “Who in the world?”
He said, “That Wayne Morse. He works for you, doesn't he, in some subordinate capacity?”
I said, “Now, no, no. You know that he's the senior public member of the War Labor Board.”
“Well, he undertook to write me a letter telling me what I should do and I'm not going to take that kind of talk.
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