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their orders were to approve those agreements.

When Ickes was making these agreements with Lewis I don't think he was in consultation with the mine operators. I gave him one of our people to help him, the one who knew most about the previous mine agreements and the general pattern of mine agreements. Lewis's demands were only excessive, but they weren't out of the usual pattern. For instance, he really didn't want his portal-to-portal pay demand. That would have been embarrassing. He didn't want his blacksmithing demand. He didn't want his laundering of the clothing. He didn't want those side issues. So Ickes was in touch with me, and I assigned to him people who knew the negotiating situation.

The agreements that Ickes made with Lewis were not out of line with the pattern of agreements in the mines. They were just excessive in amounts. They resulted in a larger sum of money being paid by the mine owners than they had anticipated paying. The mine operators would have been willing to agree to this, and I'm sure they knew pretty well what it was. I don't know how much Ickes saw of the mine operators. I don't think much, because they moved rather rapidly.

I'm sure that the mine owners would have been willing to accept this, but the War Labor Board stopped them, and said they couldn't do it. That was when I felt they had really stepped over the bounds of common sense. Whether