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He had something to do with the longshoremen once. There was a very crooked outfit there running things. I tried to tell him that and he denounced me to my face, saying, “No, you're absolutely wrong. You're as prejudiced as the rest of them. They're all right. What if these working men do steal a bag of coffee beans?” It was not meant to encourage dishonesty, but was just a kind of a human understanding that if a man was hungry, he'd steal anything, although the particular people who were involved in this dispute were not hungry by a long shot. If they were stealing, it was for profit. The situation was very hazardous because there were a lot of things, guerillas and gun men involved. This was when I was Secretary of Labor and he was mayor. At that time he acted like a clown somewhat. He jumped up and down, shook his fists and so on.

There was a federal mediator with me when I interviewed him about this. The federal mediator was horrified that the mayor of the City of New York should behave like that. I was explaining to him that it really didn't mean anything, that it was emotionalism, Italian temperament and so forth, that the mayor wasn't defending the crooks. Of course, the mayor said the Department of Labor and the “federals,” as he called them - the federal mediators - were throwing the case in favor of the great shipowners and the stevedoring