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pay 25,000 dollars, and it was expected that it would be a short strike and it would be over soon. He also was led to believe that the sides were very close and that the thing would be ended soon. Instead, he remained with the strike forever. His reputation was completely destroyed, and the union at different points of the strike attacked him as a betrayer of the union, enemy of the union, and physically spit at him in one all night session. This had, I think, a significant bearing on his decision not to run for mayor.

The other aspect was that the managements -- which had not been unfavorable to Doris in the past, regarding her as an easy pushover on most things, alot of talk and no action -- this time was confronted with a strike which they wanted to end. They could have broken the union at any time during the strike if they wanted to be tough. The management entered into agreements with her to settle the strike at least four, and maybe six, times. In each case, at the very last moment Turner turned down the agreement. The situation reached the point where towards the end of the strike -- one other thing.

At one point in the strike Harry Van Arsdale, who had never been asked to come in by anybody, called and asked RWDSU president Heaps if he could help. They said, “Okay,” and he came. So Van Arsdale attended a number of meetings with the managements and with the union leaders, and visited the picket lines several times, and became so angry at what he had seen that he, at one session -- this was reported to me by Irving Stern, where he was present with a small group of leaders of the union -- Van Arsdale verbally attacked Al Heaps for permitting such a disastrous situation to take place, and with such potentially disastrous results for the workers. The union leadership, Turner and King, had always regarded Van Arsdale as their enemy and had wanted to keep him away from it. He helped mobilize people for it -- and money was raised for this strike.

Huge -- I don't know how much money it was. But the workers received nothing! There were no strike benefits. Now, it is true that we never paid strike benefits in a city-wide strike, but we did so because we never expected a city-wide strike to last very long. So if it was going to go seven days, or ten days -- which we would regard as the longest you can carry on a strike of a city-wide proportion, because after that you are lost -- we always told the members straight out, “There will be no strike benefits.” Here, nobody was told anything, and people began to ask. So workers who were in very dire straits were urged to go to the credit union for loans which were limited to 150 dollars, tops, at fifteen percent interest. This is while the union officers are living it up in the hotel.