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anthracite coal mines.” Every doggone year.” On May 15th Truman warned that the Government would take the necessary steps to get the coal mined. On May 17th Lewis and the operators accepted Ickes' proposal to raise miners' pay $1.37 1/2 per day.” Does this strike separate itself in your mind from any of the other strikes that happened every year?

Perkins:

Well, not since I had first persuaded Ickes to take over as administrator, you see. That was three years before. But at that time--of course, that was when the great crisis was, or at least it seemed to me it was the crisis, and we set up this pattern of the Government seizing and operating, and Ickes being the operator, and from that time on it went on.

Now, this was not different, except that it faced Mr. Truman differently, and he had to cope with it and was not familiar with all the background. Yes, that's what I had to do. I had to brief him on this whole situation. I had more than one private conference with him, before May 4. I had to brief him on this whole coal situation, how Ickes got into the situation, what the relationship between Ickes and Lewis was, to assure him that Lewis would accept this ruling, whatever ruling Ickes made, and his statement that it wasn't the right way to do things, and Vinson's statement that it wasn't





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