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Beginning with that little rumpus then Curran started to form a union. That was the beginning of this big union of which he is still the head. It's grown and grown. He made his definite split with the Commies ten years ago, or more, but up until that time he had at least tolerated them, and I'm not sure that he hadn't fostered them. Of course, he would say that they were very useful to him. How useful they were, I don't know.
I had more than one long talk with Curran. From what our mediators said about him, from our conversation over the phone, and from our first meeting, I had thought rather well of him. I had decided he was a pretty good type, who was a natural American thinker who thought in terms of compromising differences. If you don't agree with your neighbor, all right, you find something you do both agree upon and you agree to agree. It's better to agree about something than to have fights over the back fence all the time. That's a very American attitude. We don't stop and growl at each other about our grievances and our rights and feuds. Of course, there are feuds in some parts of the country, but we don't do that ordinarily. Curran struck me as the type who would naturally think in
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