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try. I'll try it on Lewis, anyhow.”

So I put in a telephone call. I was all alone in my office, and it was along about 7:00 or 8:00 o'clock at night. I got Lewis on the telephone in New York, and I said, “Now, what I'm going to say to you is absolutely unauthorized, and I'm making an exploratory question with you. Nobody has authorized me to do it. I have not mentioned this to another human soul, in the Government or outside of the Government.”

“Very well. I'm very glad to hear what you have to say.”

“I trust you to protect me in this,” I said, “from the Press as well as from everybody else. If you don't like it, just tell me so and that's that.”

Then I sketched vaguely, “Now, suppose the Government should seize the mines, in the legal sense--in the purely legal sense--run the United States flag up over the gate, over the entrance. Is it a possible thing that the United Mine Workers would go into a huddle and vote to go to work for the Government, in those mines?”

He said, “Well! “Well, Madame Secretary, I do not know. Let me think a minute.”

Then he said, “Who would be the boss? Who would run things?”

“Well,” I said, “the Government.”