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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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you see--clear areas of coal, just solid coal for long miles, you know. Beautiful place. Easy to mine, quick to mine, a day's wages are absorbed quickly, and the coal is a beautiful coal. And it can be transported to Norfolk and put on ships for very, very little. You see, a great part of the cost of coal is transportation costs.

Interviewer:

Are these captive mines that you're referring to?

Perkins:

Oh, no, no. It's the Pocahontas field. The Pocahontus wine. They're entirely privately owned. It's fairly recent--that is, within the last thirty years--that that's been discovered and worked, and it's had the effect of cutting all the regional mines out of business in recent years, you see. But at that time the small marginal mines were operation, because the war effort needed everything they could get out.

Lewis was always dying to get Jim Franc's of the Pocahontus before one of these committees or into one of these things. He never would come near it. And although he called wires from his New York office and had the yes or no on a lot of things, he never was a member of any negotiating committee, and he never would show his face. You couldn't get to him. Couldn't get him into these things at all. But he would urge the others to keep their backs up, you see.

You asked me why Lewis insisted on keeping on striking? well, something offended him. I think it was unwise





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