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But I really think it was these lectures of Hugh Johnson's that put the idea into the head of men like John Lewis, Sidney Hillman, who were there and around Washington all the time, as well as Dave Dubinsky, and even Charlie Howard of the Printers who was having troubles of his own in the AF of L, and one or two others, that here was the way out. A good many of them were industrialized completely. Sidney Hillman had amalgamated his union. He inherited a group of workers each of which was organized into a special craft. Out of that he made the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. Formerly they had been cutters' unions, basters' unions, buttonhole makers' unions, pants makers' unions, and so on. He amalgamated them all into one union and had, to all intents and purposes, an industrial union in the men's clothing trade, although some of them retained for many years a kind of a separation, and at least always had a specially negotiated wage for each of these different divisions of work. If I remember rightly, the pants makers were the lowest paid. That was traditional. That had been the tradition of the industry and they continued to get in their amalgamated contracts a slightly lower wage than the men who worked on coats, waistcoats, and so forth.

I cite all this because I do think it was an important psychological factor in the eventual development of the CIO.