But this was not the problem before the War Contracts Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs and its chairman, Senator James E. Murray, of Montana. “Full employment” was the war cry of that era, and the C.I.O. echoed it through the halls of Congress. Full employment, it appeared, was the right of every citizen, and the government must guarantee it to him whether he wanted to work or not. Some industrialists applied similar thinking to their corporations; the idea of government-guaranteed corporate social security had prompted the creation of the NRA and the formulation of its monopolistic codes. Now labor unions on the one hand and trade associations on the other vied with each other in bringing pressure to bear on Congress to relieve them from the necessity for struggling to survive. And so when Senator Murray extended us an invitation to appear at a hearing to be held on July 10, 1944, we decided to conform with the Speaker’s advice. The C.I.O. had tipped its hand in a circular distributed in advance, castigating aircraft manufacturers as profiteers who had averaged as high as 3,000 per cent on war contracts. Since we manufacturers were scheduled to make the first appearance and be followed by the C.I.O., it was a fair guess that we had been selected as whipping boys. And so our association, using the air policy as its bible, prepared its case with a special slant at this matter of war profits. We divided our presentation into four parts, with a separate witness for each. I was to make the general introduction of the industry viewpoint, and submit our statement of air-power policy. J. C. Ward, president of Fairchild Aviation Corporation and a convincing witness, was to cover postwar national defense and the aircraft industry. Harry Woodhead, president of Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft Corporation, was to discuss the George-Murray bill, manpower demobilization, contract termination, disposal of war surplus, and reconversion. Joseph T. Geuting, chairman of the Personal Aircraft Council of the Chamber, was to discuss the role of personal aircraft in postwar readjustment. When the hearing opened in one of the large committee rooms of the Senate Office Building, the place was crowded and the press table filled by Washington correspondents attracted by the C.I.O. handout. Senator Murray sat on the dais while the witnesses were called to testify from a table at his feet. This layout put the witness at something of a disadvantage and news photographers sometimes used it to get worm’s-eye shots of bigshots looking anything else but. I recalled one taken of a friend of mine in the Black investigation, and widely used by the press, in which my friend, who was really a good egg, looked like nothing so much as a praying mantis.