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sides. We were urging the Mayor that he should stop the city's reimbursement, to threaten the hospitals that he was going to cut back their reimbursement from the city. But the counter weight was the Catholic Church and the Protestant hospitals. You know, the trustees of hospitals, you've got to realize you're dealing with very, very important people. You're dealing with John J. McCloy, Benjamin Buttenweiser. We're talking about people who are very, very important in this society, not only in New York City, but nationally. So those people can reach out and stop anything you want to do effectively. So you have to have a strong counter weight against them. Because Wagner's was -- he had to show that he was involved -- he could -- because the press would go to him and say, “You're the Mayor, what are you doing?” “I'm meeting with both sides.” So he would have these meetings that could go on interminably and nothing would happen. They would be in one room and the union leaders with Van Arsdale in another. Wagner, he didn't hear well in one ear, so whenever he didn't want to turn off he would turn around and let you talk in to his bad ear. Nothing was really happening; Van Arsdale could also outsit you forever, too. He didn't care. He didn't mind this thing. He had his executive board all the time.

Now I told you about the communist issue?

No.

Okay. The communist issue did not arise during the strike from the press. As a matter of fact, it did arise one time late in the strike, a front page article in the Journal American, the Hearst paper, called, “The Communist Past of the Leaders.” It ended the day after. It was quoting some hospital people saying that these people, Leon Davis, had been before the Un-American Committee, etcetera. It disappeared after that.

Were you personally named in the Journal American article?

No, no. It was Davis kind of things. We did get -- this is what happened on the communist issue. The attack came not from the media or from management; the attack came from inside labor. Van Arsdale called me up one day -- Davis was in the hotel -- and he said, “Look, I want something from Davis and I need to have it tomorrow.” I remember it was a Friday. He needed it for Saturday morning. He said, “I'm having a meeting of the executive board of the Central Labor Council,” a meeting down at City Hall. They were meeting on the steps of City Hall or something like that. He said, “I need a statement from Davis on the question of communism, that he is not a communist,” or something like that. So I called Davis and he