I don’t think we’re basically a revolutionary country. We have too large a middle class. The middle class tends to be apathetic. An apathetic middle … - Studs Terkel

Lord, I’m so low down, baby,
I declare I’m looking up at down. The men in the mine, baby,
They all looking down at me.

I'm not an optimist. I'm hopeful.

The strike of 1931 revolved around readers in the factory. The workers themselves used to pay twenty-five to fifty cents a week and would hire a man to read to them during work. A cigar factory is one enormous open area, with tables at which people work. A platform would be erected, so that he’d look down at the cigar makers as he read to them some four hours a day. He would read from newspapers and magazines and a book would be read as a serial. The choice of the book was democratically decided. Some of the readers were marvelous natural actors. They wouldn’t just read a book. They’d act out the scenes. Consequently, many cigar makers, who were illiterate, knew the novels of Zola and Dickens and Cervantes and Tolstoy. And the works of the anarchist, Kropotkin. Among the newspapers read were The Daily Worker and the Socialist Call.