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worthwhile to stick with Lewis in this situation. The A.F. of L. at that time, in executive committee, was full of a lot of people that just seemed to have no reason for being. The old man that was head of the union label division was member of it, and he was just half gone--I mean, he hardly knew what he was about. I don't remember his name now. Seems to me it was Richard or something like that.

He was one of them, and there were a lot of people like that. The whole executive board did not coordinate the activities of the A.F. of L. It was a very loose organization. Of course, it is still a loose organization-- should be. But there was no intellectual coordination among their thinking. They certainly took no part in politics or in political action of any kind, but they were unresourceful in thinking of answers to the economic problems of the day. Although I dare say that in their own field of activity, they weren't bad.

At any rate, I determined to go on with John L. Lewis, and although I rarely saw him, I did include him in various conferences. I think it was about the next year or the year after that I suggested to William Green that they might make peace with Lewis by putting him on the executive committee. That was at the San Francisco meeting that they took that up, and that they did put John L. Lewis on the executive committee. He came back into the charmed circle