Yours, truly,
D.R. FRANCIS,
President.
Hon. JOHN M. ALLEN,
Acting President National Commission.
On November 5, Mr. Allen addressed another communication to President
Francis, as follows:
NOVEMBER 5, 1904.
SIR: The National Commission is in receipt of your two letters of the 4th instant, in reply to one of same date sent to you. The first of the two letters recognizes our contention. Your second letter is one of the most surprising communications we have ever had from the local company. You seem to have mended your hold after your first letter of the 4th instant and for some reason repudiated what Mr. Miller, Mr. Betts, and the writer clearly understood to be an acquiescence in and an agreement to the contentions as to the rights of the National Commission contained in our letter to you of October 18. We inclose herewith a copy of said letter of the 18th instant for the purpose of refreshing your memory without the necessity of looking it up.
You will see that in that letter we defined the contention of the National Commission as to its right to approve or disapprove of the awards of the juries, and it concludes with a demand for arbitration unless this right is conceded by your company.
You will remember that instead of answering this letter you invited Mr. Betts and the writer into your office, where we sent for Mr. Miller, to discuss this question. You should remember that when you broached this subject the writer said to you, "We are not looking for work, nor are we looking for trouble, but we think Congress has imposed this duty of approving and disapproving these awards on us, and we will not shirk it." There was considerable discussion in your office that day, but no intimation from you or anyone else that there was still opposition to our contention. You went on to say that the lists that you were getting out were not official in any sense and would not be until we said so.
You will recall that this interview between us was at your suggestion and intended, we supposed, as an answer to our communication of the 18th of October, in which we had demanded arbitration on this very question. You say in your second letter of the 4th instant that "It was our understanding that before official notification to exhibitors a list of awards of the superior jury would be furnished by the secretary of said jury to the Commission and also to this company for their information and for the purpose of giving the Commission and this company an opportunity to call the attention of the jury, or the committee of five now acting as such, to any errors which the Commission or this company might discover, so that the same might be considered and corrected before giving official notification to the exhibitors." We can not understand where you could have gotten that understanding. I know that there was nothing said about the National Commission having a list submitted to it for any other purpose than the purpose of approval or disapproval. We never asked for a list for information, nor was anything ever said about referring anything back to the committee of five. What was ever said by the members of the National Commission then present to indicate to you that we withdrew or abandoned our demand for arbitration if the right of approval or disapproval was not accorded the National Commission? And if nothing was said by us evidencing such an abandonment of the demand, what answer have you ever made to such a demand? If your conversation with the members of the National Commission in your office that day was not intended to make the impression on them that you assented to sending the awards to the National Commission for approval or disapproval, it was as misleading a conversation as I ever listened to, and both the other gentlemen of the National Commission who were present agree with me in this view.
Right here let me suggest that in the future our written communications be answered in writing. We will then at least have a record in writing.