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The fact that he couldn't do it, that he didn't have the means to do it and that the miners wouldn't have followed him into it, was not know to the world in general, you see. They couldn't figure that out. They thought Lewis spoke for the miners with one voice, and of course the miners weren't like that at all. They're very calm, placid men. They're practical, they know their business, and they stand by Big John because Big John in the long run has done them very well. They've prospered. He's looked out for their interests, and that's that.
But they had none of these hifalutin ideas. Neither has John L. Lewis any hifalutin ideas, nor did he have then. He has not the remotest, vaguest notion of a socialist state, we'll say. Not any. Not a trifle. He merely sees George L. Baer, and his substitute influence is John L. Lewis, but everything else right on as usual. He never has had a trace of what I call “fancy” economic thinking that brings you to the point of thinking that the socialist state would be one of justice and wisdom and so forth. He only sees John L. Lewis substituted for George L. Baer, and also for J.P. Morgan and everybody else who had power because of his money as well as his personality. He had the personality, all right. He didn't have the money and he had a different background, and he didn't see what the situation was.
At any rate, the President was very much disturbed, but he intended to laugh it off. I remember that at the next
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