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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

Foner:

They were more intimately involved up front on it, but everybody went to those things. You went to Madison Square Garden meetings that were packed, about '36, '37.

Q:

When you came into the movement in this period of '34 and '35, and fascism is on the rise, and the labor movement is growing, and you're going to constant debates, the schools are politicized, what was your sense of what was going to happen? What were you looking for?

Foner:

We were rather optimistic that we were moving towards -- we call it a socialist society, a just society, that things were going to get better. You remember, this is the prelude to Roosevelt. Roosevelt was '32.

Q:

Right.

Foner:

Now, even though it passes us by, this is a period of great depression. We know that there is one, and we expect that -- you see, it's like on the one hand and on the other hand. You remember that this period is a period of great WPA organization, this is the Workers Alliance in '34, but we are not involved in that. So that there are mass movements that are taking place in the cities that involve unemployed workers. We know about them. They come and speak at the schools, come and speak in the neighborhoods to represent them, you know, to give everybody a shot in the arm, a real live worker is coming to talk.

Q:

Your background is a strong working class background.

Foner:

My father, you mean?

Q:

Both your parents.

Foner:

Yeah, but then my father, remember, bought a garage. But I went to school. Not everybody in the Depression went to college, not many people went to college. Most people had to go to work. You'll find a lot of people who are going to school at night and working. People who were at the student movement in the evening sessions, who went to school at night because their families were too poor to permit them. They needed that income from them to bring it in.

[END TAPE]

Q:

Was there ever a point at which you considered joining the Socialist Party?

Foner:

No.

Q:

Why not?





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