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Now, to go back to sort of general history and things going on, this is already the period of the Smith Act trials, the Rosenbergs? Just getting close. The Rosenbergs were executed in '53.

In '53, I'm already in 1199.

Right, but the trial and everything was going on.

Yes. Yes, it's going on during this period. See, this is all going on in the background of this battle, so you can see it's not exactly the most conducive period for unions to grow. You had to just tuck your head in and see if you can live. And people like Livingston and Osman, they did not see unions as defensive things that you would hang into a corner and pull in your horns. If there's anything I learned from Arthur Osman, it is that you must give workers impossible tasks. You must constantly be organizing, because if theunion does not organize, it is going to start contemplating itself, and you're going to end up with people fighting each other inside the union.

Were you very sad to leave 65?

By the time I left, I was sad to leave 65. I had a lot of very, very good experiences there. But on the other hand, it also was difficult to work with some of the people like Livingston. By this time, Osman was--no, Osman was still there. They were difficult. But it was sad. I didn't know where I was going, that was the big point, but I was young yet, still young.

So now we get to 1199. Why don't you begin by describing the character of 1199 and your initial impressions of Leon Davis.

1199 at that time was continuing in the mold of what it had been formed as. It was formed in '32 as a Union of Retail Drugstore Workers. It was formed as an industrial union. It was formed by a small handful of people, including Leon Davis, who met down on Chamber Street to unite with other groups who had been talking for years about the need to have a union of drugstore workers, pharmacists, a guild. They didn't know what they were going to call it. So they formed a Pharmacists Union of Greater New York. It was an independent union, and they had no money, they had nothing. They went around, and they tried to organize drugstores. The important thing about it is that the drugstore field at that time, the retail drugstore field, is a field in which the average establishment is one- and-a-half workers. The pharmacist or the clerk, whoever works, works directly side by side with the boss, which makes it very difficult to organize. But in '32, it's the height of the Depression. Most