Session: 123456789101112131415161718192021222324         Page 383384385386387388389390391392393394395396397398399400401402403404405 of 592

to wander around to find a George Meeny quote that would be okay. I used the trickle down quote, which is a good quote. You know, the trickle down theory. You sit at the table -- you know what the quote is.

To find something he said that was pro-labor.

[laughs] Pam heard that she didn't want to do it. Pam said, “Let me handle it.” So she called her up and she said, “Look, why don't you send it back. We'll give it to somebody else.” She called her back and she said, “No, no, no, no. I'll do it.” [laughter] She wanted to do it, and she did a wonderful thing on it. In every case they all agreed to do it.

So they began to work on it. I began to talk about the cost of a book, but until we saw some of the art, we were stymied. I had talked to the people at SITES -- the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service -- about the idea. They said they liked the idea -- they had toured The Working American -- they liked the idea but they wanted to see some of the art. So Pam set a deadline to get art in in the summertime that year. I remember the art was brought in to our headquarters and brought upstairs and put in to the conference room under wraps. One day when we had about fifteen or twenty of them -- we had a sampling of them -- we called the people at SITES, and they came in from Washington. We put the things all around the conference room. They came and they looked and they said, “We'll take the exhibition.” The original plan was to do it for eighteen months -- they'll do an eighteen month tour. “The catalogue we do, they'll book the tour. We'll open in at Gallery 1199, and then it will tour. We'll try to keep the price down, so that it can move.” They kept it to around 2500 dollars, plus travel. But we had to do the catalogue. The exhibition ended up being extended to three years. I ended up doing all the booking -- most of the booking. [Telephone rings, tape stops and starts]

I said I wanted the show to go in to certain urban areas where there are unions. They [SITES] got some bookings, and then I began -- once the thing started rolling I knew what was in there -- I started calling people around the country saying, “Look, this needs a museum. Go form a committee of union people, go to a museum, work out a deal.” In lots of places that's what happened -- unions got together and worked it out. But before I get there.

When we knew what the art was, we went to Pilgrim [Press] and they saw it, and they were excited. The idea would be a thirty-two page book, nine by twelve. Pam has very very expensive tastes, and so everything was going up and up and up and up. It had to be printed by