{"value"=>"<p>Through its Special Committee on Conciliation, the Industrial Department was involved in bringing together the two sides in the 1901 strike by the Amalgamated Association against the United States Steel Corporation mills in Pittsburgh. Decades later, in 1934, at the height of the Depression, the department, chaired by the diplomat and lawyer James J. Gerard, was delegated to examine the purpose of each new emergency measure proposed by the federal government under the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933.</p> <p>The department was also directed by the Executive Council of NCF to define a new and workable alliance to replace the relationship between government, industry, capital, labor, and the public as defined by the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, which was scheduled to expire in 1935. Gerard believed that the National Industrial Recovery Act was an essentially flawed but effective middle ground between cut-throat competition and socialization, and he and Ralph Easley backed Howard E. Coffin's plan to replace the defunct Act. In his plan, Coffin, who was the chairman of the Board of Southeastern Cotton, called for, among other things, the right of industry to organize and regulate itself under industrial committees.</p> <p>The files include correspondence, 1934-1935, relating to the extension of the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 beyond its expiration date in 1935; among the correspondents were Winthrop Aldrich, Pierre du Pont, Marshall Field, W. Averill Harriman, Percy Straus, Samuel M. Vauclain, and Daniel Willard. There are also correspondence and other materials from 1935 relating to the Coffin plan for industrial self-government. . The files also include miscellaneous papers including a report by Ralph Easley on the work of the Conciliation Committee in 1901 to resolve the strike of steel workers in Pittsburgh, and remarks on the need to restore to the Justice Department the power to deal with the Communist Party of the United States. There are no files for the period 1902-1933.</p>"}