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he's very practical, He will enunciate a great program. He doesn't have the slightest idea of carrying that all out. Now, that always annoys some people. They know that he won't carry it out, and they find out that he doesn't carry it out. They say, “Oh, he's an opportunist.”
A great many non-labor people really admired him enormously when he would announce these great programs that the United Mine workers were going to have, you know, with every need of mortal man provided for and satisfied. They would really believe he was going to do it, you see. Well, if they'd had any brains they would have known that of course he wasn't going to do it. But they would go over to him whole-heartedly, and then they would be terribly disappointed when, in the middle of negotiations, without saying anything to anybody, Lewis would say, “All right, we'll settle for this.”
Then it would be all over--after having made these terrific speeches about what he would have, and the starving miners, and so forth and so on. Then, in the middle of a conference that had lasted just as long as he thought it was wise for it to last, a negotiation, he would suddenly go in the other room and settle down with the man who represented the owners, Charlie He'd sit down with him a minute and they'd figure out two or three things, and the
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