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The spirit of the workers, strangely enough, was very, very -- it was an unusual baptism of fire for them, and the spirit was quite good. In the middle of the strike, the hospitals made an offer, and they made the offer through Van Arsdale. Van Arsdale told them that he would present the offer to the workers and we called a meeting at Hotel Diplomat, and we packed Hotel Diplomat. The difficulties of conducting a strike of this kind -- well, we had never anticipated anything like that.

Are we talking about the spirit of the workers?

Oh, yes, the spirit of the workers was quite good.

The meeting with Van Arsdale in the meeting of the strike?

Oh, yes, he reported their proposal and the proposal was that instead of union recognition they would institute a program of education and scholarships. It was crazy, it really was, and he read off it very seriously. He has a way of -- and then he said, “We've agreed that we're going to submit this thing to a vote.” Then there was a discussion and workers started to the microphone. That was wonderful; it was wonderful. That the response opposing that offer was terrific. So was -- everything we did was covered big. You know, when you have a strike like that, particularly in 1959, and it's in the summertime, so it's a dead period. So we were getting the media coverage all the way through and they were with us. The reporters were enormously supportive of us, tremendously supportive of us.

I just have --

Yes, sure.

-- a short question about the -- I'm not sure of the role of it exactly, but I recall that there was also a very long steel strike that same year. Was there any talk about a revival of labor unrest in general terms after the quiescent 1950's as a consequence of the two big strikes?

No. The evaluations were that black workers, Hispanic workers were organizing in hospitals and they were organizing in a militant manner. And that this was important for the labor movement. Of course, I remember theoretical articles appearing, always referring to the strike of the hospital workers as an example of labor's new found militancy, that kind of thing. Now there were other attempts to resolve [the strike] -- we were urging the Mayor -- we knew he wouldn't do it -- of course there were pressures on both