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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

really out of sync with our political views. They're in sync with the union as a union. The union had -- you know, fairly traditional.

Q:

Getting back to the Wallace campaign, people still are debating whether the Wallace movement was a major mistake.

Q:

Do you think it was?

Foner:

It's hard to say. I don't think I've come to -- At different times I come to different conclusions. On the labor movement I think that the major mistake that took place was in pushing the left forces out of the labor movement, for the left to make it stand around the Marshall Plan and not to try to work out something with the CIO to stay in. That, I think, could have been accomplished, and I think it was a mistake to-- you know, you put your head out on the block by doing the things they did.

Q:

On the question of the Marshall Plan.

Foner:

The Marshall Plan, yes.

Q:

What else do you recall about that fight? You weren't really directly involved.

Foner:

I wasn't directly involved. But the more I learned about it, the more I concluded in my own mind that it had been a mistake to break from the CIO.

Q:

In general in this period--this is really the last of the general questions before we resume with the chronology--there's an increase, obviously, in red-baiting activity in the society in general. In this period you move toward the expulsion of the CIO unions. What are your recollections about that period in terms of the red-baiting and especially in terms of these divisions which are growing in the CIO?

Foner:

We on the left had a sense of being isolated, except that we would tend to like put the wagons in a circle kind of thing. You'd get together with your own people, because it's easier and more comfortable to be that way. So we were isolated, no question about it. On the other hand, as you came into 65, even though 65 was having great trouble because of this, and this was the basis for the fight later on, the base was bigger. See, 65 felt the effects of this period, too, but not -- they were able to keep themselves together. They still were a strong, powerful organization, because they were dealing, for the most part, with small employers. See, if you're dealing with a department store, you're dealing with big stuff. If you're dealing with 1199, it's dealing with small drugstore owners who may be united in





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