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But while we're there, Cherkasky listens to this, and he turns to Davis after it's over, he says, “What do you pay this guy?”
Davis says, “Seventy-five dollars a week.”
He says, “You have a good buy.” Anyway, so that was Montefiore. Let's stop at that unless you have questions about Montefiore. Obviously the workers were --
Yes. I would be interested to know more details about where you were when the results of the vote if you could recreate the feelings that you felt at that time.
I can't even remember where I was at the time. All I remember -- we were at the headquarters, I remember. We were at the headquarters up at Gun Hill Road, and all of us were there. It was like a second coming, you know, with the workers. There was such great happiness there. It was like Frank Merriwell against all odds. You had beaten the odds. You have no idea what that meant. Most people would not have given you a dime, a chance to beat the hospitals. That became even clearer in '59, that it was impossible, that we were walking in where angels feared to tread. And again, people were saying, “These people, they deliberately set it up.” Later on we were accused as cynical people who had figured out all the angles, such as we went into hospitals because we knew there were black and Puerto Rican workers, and we could easily get them, we could get a lot of sympathy. Really, the truth is that we didn't know what, we didn't know our a-- from our elbow. We did have some gifted people who could dig a trench, you know, from every ditch make a trench. It was that kind of thing that was very, very inspiring. You see, at that time you would work from early morning until late at night, but everybody was excited, like shot with -- It became even better once the Montefiore thing -- once the Montefiore thing was over, I remember Bernie sat down and wrote a brochure. It was an eight-and-a-half by eleven page, three-folds, it was two-color, and it had a tear-in membership card, tear-in, not a card. Before we got into cards. To give it out, the whole staff and members cover all the hospitals. Elliott, by this time is beginning to work with charts, where the hospitals are. We don't even know where they are. You're beginning to get the reaction, because not only is there coverage in the black and Hispanic press enormous. They're all taking credit for it, and I'm writing the editorials. El Diario was proud to be the first. What do they call them -- “La crusada,” that was it. La crusada, the crusade. “We have w on the first step in the crusade.” The Amsterdam was doing big things on it
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