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for him to conduct a strike at this time. I think it was unwise of him--I won't say unpatriotic, but it probably was unpatriotic. He claimed a patriotism to his organization and to his miners, and he claimed that the operators were making plenty of money and that they could afford to pay the wages and this was what they should do. He insisted. It was that operation that made him decide that he could strike.

Of course, he trusted a lot to luck, you see. There would be a break somewhere. He thought the operators would give way. He thought they would give way, although already there was price-fixing in operation and theoretically they couldn't. Of course, he deeply resented that. He deeply resented all the operations of the O.P.A. and the War Labor Board and all that kind of thing. That he was dead set against, and he would have nothing of it. He believed in direct negotiations between John L. Lewis and the President, or John L. Lewis and somebody else in the Government. He wasn't going to go through any of these measly boards and committees and so forth that were set up for lesser men.

It was partly that, and partly that he didn't approve of it as a method, any more than I do--or did, then. I never discussed it with him at all, but I thought it was a silly way to operate. I thought the War Labor Board was an absolutely inexcusable invention. Absolutely unnecessary. There were a lot of things that were done by these special a gencies that