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Blum government, they would have been pitched out by the police. That was the truth. But they took advantage of the Blum government, who was committed to them and who had come forward to the people as the friend of the people and the friend of the workingman. Their psychology was good. The Blum government would not get the police in and throw them out, butwould try to help them negotiate.

I spoke to Blum about it too and he said the same thing, “Oh yes, this strike you had in your country last year made a great impression here.”

I cite all this because it's not commonly thought of in this country. People think that somebody invented it in Flint, Michigan. The time the sit-down strike occurred in Flint, Michigan was the third time it occurred in modern times.

Blum was a very learned man, an historian and a man of learning. He told me that that method of securing what you desired from your master had been utilized in the Middle Ages, and that the peasants had used it. He gave me a reference on it and somebody looked it up for me. The peasants, in some disturbed time in France when their landlord had oppressed them too much, threw themselves on the road in great numbers and refused to do any work, but refused to move. They stayed right there