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He said, “I said to him about what I said to you, that it was a possible thing. It was tolerable. We could think in terms like that. Sloan asked my advice as to whether I thought that General Motors could safely proceed in that way. I told him I thought that they could, that none of this was safe for any of us. We had to realize that. But it was at least fair.”

They were all bogged down because they thought it was unfair to deal with a union representing men that didn't belong to it. It was unfair to the men that didn't belong to it. I think they were honest in that feeling, because they had made such a point for twenty years of their open shop policy - “nobody needs to belong to a union,” which really means, “no one can belong to a union” - that they knew they had brought many men to work for them who couldn't get into a union, who never had belonged to a union, who didn't want to belong to a union. They had made it a part of their propaganda. They had educated the men against it. They knew that. They had a certain sense of the incongruity of a change of front on the matter. Therefore, they felt it was unfair.

We talked a while over the telephone. He said, “Why don't you call up Sloan now?”