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a scandal. “They can take it up with me and I sympathize with each of them and don't commit myself to either one.”

Ickes just ignored the War Labor Board. I persuaded them to pack up their troubles in their old kit bags and be sensible. The way we handled it was to kind of postpone the issue, and wait until next week, wait until the week after, saying, “Certainly the President is not going to have you put to scorn, Mr. Davis and Mr. Morse.” The people who took it hardest were Morse and Davis and Frank Graham. They were public members, and they were high-minded people. They were used to having things done in an orderly way, and they minded it terribly. Neither the labor members nor the employer members were as wrought up about it, although they would shake their heads solemnly, saying, “Terrible, terrible, terrible.” Still they weren't as wrought up.

Davis was ready to resign, egged on by Morse, of course, who wanted to have the thing blow up. I think it was only a personal appeal to him by the President to let this thing ride temporarily until we were over the worst of the hump that saved the day.

Now, as to the time when all this occurred, it's hard for me to pinpoint it, because there were so many coal troubles that they blend. Trouble with coal was just a continuous thing along here. We had had a terrible problem with the captive mines in '41, and the war came simultaneously with the resolution of that. The war really saved the day on that. The Defense Mediation Board broke up over one coal strike, and the War Labor Board always had a coal problem before them.