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rumor. I haven't a doubt that the President did say that to somebody, who was probably very angry about it. The President was confused about where the leadership lay in this country, and I don't wonder, because there had been so much backing and filling, splitting, denunciation of one labor group by the other through this whole period of the two first terms of his administration. Certainly William Green, who was the President of the AF of L, was the man whom the President looked to at the beginning of his administration, as the principal spokesman for labor in the country. William Green, although looked to as the spokesman, didn't have anything to say. When you asked him what he thought about anything, he said, “Why, that's very fine, Mr. President.” Or he said, “Why I don't know? That's a new idea, Mr. President.” He didn't have anything to say.
John I. Lewis was making pretentions of being a much greater labor thinker than Green, but John I. Lewis, when asked what he thought about anything, swelled up with such vanity that he said nothing really that you could grab hold of. John Lewis always wanted to go behind the door and arrange it with Jim Francis of the Pocohantas field, insisting upon Jim Francis giving up this or that, or doing this or that. John Lewis really
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