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strike, too. We also went to important people. I remember we released a statement on a Sunday before the strike was to start, that was signed by Ralph Sockman, who was a very, very important Protestant minister, A. Philip Randolph, I think Mrs. Roosevelt -- I'm pretty sure it was Mrs. Roosevelt, who was big on statements; important people, not union people, for the most part, maybe no more than six or eight names, who called on the management of the hospitals to avert a strike and to sit down and try. The statement was kind of vague; it didn't recognize the union, but it spoke about elementary rights of justice that these workers need, and that a strike would be terrible, etc. We went into the press with an ad from -- I think I mentioned the Daniel Cantwell article; that was a pamphlet that I got hold of in Chicago, a Monseignor Cantwell, a Catholic dignitary, was talking about why it was im portant that workers in hospitals should have the right to have a union. The Times editorially was saying it would be wise to try to work out things. They were sort of sympathetic to us, but weren't telling the hospitals what to do. The Post and other papers were doing likewise, but nothing seemed to move them. I remember there were meetings down at City Hall that took place with Van Arsdale and other labor leaders. Bill Michelson was part of it, and other members of the Central Labor Council's executive board. And since the hospitals would never sit in the same room with Leon Davis, because their lawyers told them that meant tacit union recognition, we had some representatives from our officers who would be down there just to know what was going on.

I remember the night before the strike was called, they were down at City Hall all night long, waiting in the hope that there would be some resolution to it, and we were in the headquarters all night long, waiting, sitting, and the plans were out of what we would do. At 5:00 o'clock in the morning, Davis gave the word out, “There's a strike. Get the word out to everybody. We go out at 6:00 o'clock.” So at 6:00 o'clock in the morning on May 8th, some 3,500 workers in six hospitals walked out. Strangely, the seventh was Lenox Hill. The reason Lenox Hill was added, we were rather unsure of Lenox Hill, of our strength there. We weren't too sure of doing it, so we held off on Lenox Hill. Van Arsdale had gotten into an argument with Benjamin Buttenweiser, who was the president of the board of Lenox Hill. He's the guy, I think I may have mentioned earlier, who was active in the Urban League, and when the Urban League adopted a statement in support of the strikers, he withdrew all his financial support to the Urban League. That story came from Ted Kheel, who was at that time the head of the Urban League. But he and Van Arsdale had gotten into some kind of argument that was rather bitter, and Van Arsdale was so angry about