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OK, let's see if this will work. Yeah. OK. We're at number 25 about, You know, and I guess you just clip this. Yeah, they go almost anywhere. There's an inside and an outside though, right? Yes, silver. Yeah, the silver's on the outside. It look like a

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tie tack. So Yeah, that that little thing in the front. OK, today is January 14th. 19 92 And my name is Peter Carroll, and I am doing this interview with Arthur Bierman. Um, for the labor archives of San Francisco with the intention of providing a Oral

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in oral history of Arthur Bierman and focusing eventually on his relationship to the San Francisco State faculty strike and the union and things that have transpired since that time. What we'll do today is to deal mainly with the background, your background, the situation at San Francisco

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State, and then we will, you know, maybe come, if we're lucky today, we'll come to the Outbreak of the strikes in '67 and 68. So, first of all, why don't you tell me where you were born, when you were born, the kind of family you were

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born into? I was born on the 15th of November 1923. In my grandmother's house. In Madison, Nebraska. A house that my grandfather, who was first a carpenter. First a farmer and then a carpenter built himself. Delivered by Doctor Long of Sawbones. And uh my uh. Father

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was um A farmer until. He was 45 years of age and he had started selling seed corn and. Animal feeds and retired to the city. The, my mother was, had been a school teacher for a short time. And had gone to Wayne State Teachers College for

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a short period. I think just for a summer session. People got uh teaching credential going to summer school, teaching in a one-room school. And uh She was a good piano player. And tried to teach me but to very little avail. Uh, I grew up on a

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farm, first in a house that later became our chicken coop. And then in A larger house that my grandfather built for them. He bought them a farm and they lived there and I lived there. And I was one of 2 surviving children, the other one dying

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at 7 days of age. And uh as an only child on the farm. I was early treated as pretty much of an adult and my parents were quite Competitive against me. I had, uh, Sufficient intelligence to compete with them at an early age. And of course

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at this time there were no televisions and very little radio. And we were isolated and we played cards a lot. And so I was 3rd, 5 or 6 years of age, taught to memorize every card, every card. And my Most uh Vivid memories Of those days.

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Is playing by myself and imagining things which since there were no other children in the family and they're, when you're on a farm. And you're small, you can't get anyplace else to see any other children. Only time I would see them was on Saturday night when

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we go in to do the shopping. And on Sunday when we went to church at the Missouri Senate Lutheran Church. I remember vividly. Praying for a sibling. Because I was lonely And then came And finally I gave God a deadline. That child wasn't born on that

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day. I no longer believed in him. I think I was 7 at the time. And the day came and passed. There was no sibling. And that's the day I guess that I became really emotionally an atheist. No I kept continuing to try to believe until I

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was 22. When I was at the University of Michigan, this is after the war. World War II. And I was having a class in the philosophy of religion with Professor Roy Wood Sellars. Uh, genial. A wise philosopher. And we've been reading Spinoza. And I came out

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and it was an April day and the sun was shining, the trees were leafing. And it's hard to come by a nice day in Michigan in April. It was sunny and I walked out. And all of a sudden I realized. That I didn't have to believe

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anymore so that my mind and my feelings were in accord for the first time since I was 7 years old. Hm. When you were on the farm growing up, were your parents at all politically interested? Uh, no Uh, they weren't very politically interested, though they did

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vote. But I remember Uh, persuading them after long arguments. In 1932, I was 9 then to vote for Roosevelt instead of the Republican candidate, which I guess was Hoover at the time. Why? Where would you have gotten the idea that they should vote for Roosevelt? Uh,

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I don't know for sure. Uh, it seems curious to me since all of my relatives were Republicans and that's all I ever heard, and they did talk politics. My grandfather talked politics. And subsequently none of them. Uh, at the beginning. Involve themselves in the farm programs

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that were instituted by Roosevelt, they prefer to lose their farms rather than their independence. They said they didn't want any money from the government. So, uh, my, my first. I guess my first political. And moral principle. Which I later discovered was Kantian, which shouldn't surprise us

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since they're coming from Germany. was independence. I don't know whether you remember Emmanuel Kant or not. I didn't ever meet him, no, uh, nor I, but I did hear tell that, uh, when he was rector of the university at Koenigsburg, which he was several times, it

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was the, uh, tradition there that the new rector at the beginning of the school year and the professors would all go into the church and they would. They have their pledges for duty renewed and Kant would lead the parade up to the church. And then just

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at the door of the church, he would step aside and not go in while the rest of them filed in because he didn't think that a person should, and no human should give up their independence to any being, even to God. And at that time Roosevelt

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was playing somewhat the role of a political god in the United States to which my, uh, relatives refused to bow, but I think another possible Uh, so I remember they're talking about that, but I think that the Explanation Of my interest in their voting for Roosevelt

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could have come from a magazine that I remember subscribing to. And uh I'm trying to remember the name of it. It was a magazine printed in Washington DC. It was kind of like a newsletter. That came out Um I think it was a biweekly and I

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had seen an ad for that and subscribed to it. Uh, because, uh, there, there were no newspapers in our house except the local newspaper, which was mainly who visited whom and what the rainfall was and what the crop prospects were. There were no national or local

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news news at all. I mean the state news. Would you call your family liberals or conservatives, or is that inappropriate even in that? I would call them conservatives. But independent You see, I think that probably the term that fits him best is a Uh, 19th century

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term liberals. diverge from this in suggesting a vote for Roosevelt as a kid. Did you, did you see yourself then as someone who was Defying their conventional Positions Yeah, uh, I don't know that I saw myself as defying them. I think I saw that myself as

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knowing more than they did. Because they never read the magazine that I ordered and that's where I got my information. And so, uh, I was in the, I thought I was in the position of being the best informed person. And that must remember that uh. This

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was at the time of the drought and the depression, so. City people experienced only the depression. We experienced a drought and a depression. We had a 160 acre farm and one year. I remember during the drought. My father and I went through the slough. Where there

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was the only place there was green corn and ears had developed and we got a half a wagon load of corn. are We lived, our only cash income was eggs and milk. And Our income was about $500 a year at that time. Were you aware of

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the relative poverty that you were living under? I was aware that we didn't have any money. I did not consider myself in poverty. I think that that's the word poverty is a is an urban word, not a rural word. We were poor, but we weren't in

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poverty. Though I only had one pair of shoes and I had one pair of pants for the winter and one pair of pants in the summer to go to church or to go to town. And, uh, I got a nickel a week and, uh, And my

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job was to raise the garden. Yeah, so all of our food was. Gotten from the garden fresh in the spring and summer and ate canned in the autumn and winter. Now you mentioned that you went on to the University of Michigan. Was that for an undergraduate?

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No, no, I, uh. I, uh, went, To Midland College first in Fremont, Nebraska, which is a Lutheran school. I had a plan to be an attorney. There was a. An attorney in town who had graduated from the University of Nebraska. And as most young attorneys didn't

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have much business and uh the One of the teachers in the high school. Had to recruit somebody for the rhetorical contests that were always held. And she wanted me to go into the oratorical contest which I. I hadn't really considered much before, but she was a

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recruiter. Though I had, uh, participated in plays. And had written scripts, original scripts for a school to be performed and that sort of stuff, and, uh, so she said you should go down to this lawyer and have him train you. He's a good lawyer. So I

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went down there and it was wonderful being in the office and out of the hot. That uh the fields. In summertime in Nebraska. On the after the Oats or the barley is cut is 100 and it was used to get up to 120 degrees and then

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when you sit on the straw would reflect me very hot so I just say well jeez that looks like a pretty good thing so I decided to go into pre-law and I didn't have any my parents had no money to send me anyplace so. Lutheran school.

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Offered me they would do my tuition if I agreed to sweep the halls and clean some toilets, so I did that. And during that summer, I'd earned a little money for myself, 13 cents an hour working at a grocery store, uh, from 8 in the morning

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till midnight. And then uh. Uh, I also got a job in a grocery store in Fremont for $3 a Saturday, which is pretty good pay for me. At that time, I would pay for my room, which was $2 and leave $1 over for entertainment, but I

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had to sleep in a double bed with another student and share the room and the desk and everything. Uh, you were in college, then you began about what year? 1941, just around as the war was beginning. Yeah, the war began in 1941 December is when the

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Pearl Harbor attack occurred. So I went to Midland College. And it was a Lutheran college and my parents drove me down and they gave me $10. And that was all the Money they could give me, so, and I guess that's the only money I ever got

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from for going to school. Did you have a problem with the draft when you were in college? No, uh, they. December 7th they attacked and I remember sitting in the college we had a chapel. We were all shocked and everybody looked at one another and we

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realized our lives were changed suddenly at that moment. Changed underly changed. Yes Did you think you were going to go into the service, the military service? Everyone was going to go into the service of my age. There was no question about it. I never thought of

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being a conscientious objector. Though I did not want to go to war. My grandfather didn't want to go to war. He, on my father's side, he escaped from Germany and serviced in the Kaiser's army by having himself put into a barrel. And they had took food

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and water in with them and had a hole cut in it. And the sailors paid the sailor or sailors, I don't know how many to open up the barrel to let him out after the ship passed the point of no return. And that's how he came

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to America. And my father was drafted, but the war ended before and I didn't want to. I wanted to continue the tradition of life. Being, uh, I, I really didn't want to shoot anybody. I didn't want to get killed. Idea of dying in mud and I

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felt I love life so much that seemed uh. Kind of a stupid thing to do. Oh, I was pretty patriotic, I think, but I don't think I was patriotic in the hippo sense. Did you, did you seek deferment? No, I didn't seek deferment. I found another

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way. How was your way? My way was to join the Naval Aviation as a B-5 program, first of all, because they couldn't, they were so filled they couldn't take me for a year. So I, it was a whole year of going back to school. Before I

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was activated and then they also knew that they had the longest training program of any. You figure this out in advance. And the, uh, and then it was turned out even longer because they're getting more and more specialized so I'd volunteer for every specialization so I

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became probably one of the most highly trained naval aviators up to that time as a night fighter pilot with the first radar units, uh, to catch the kamikaze used to fly in up to 500 ft at night and they were pretty effective, so we were trained

00:19:11.160 - 00:19:25.860

to do that. So, uh, I was still a night fighter training and the war ended when the war ended, so you, you managed to avoid the whole, yeah, yeah, although I did make a mistake finally in the night fighter training because that was more dangerous than

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combat at that point because the Japanese pilots could had about 40 hours flying, but that time I had 550 hours and their planes were paper compared to ours, so nobody was dying out there and everybody was. Dying once in a while every night somebody died. Were

00:19:44.360 - 00:20:05.130

you able to continue your education while you were in this training, your college education? Uh The the training. Uh, it, it did turn out in fact that I did because, uh, because of the training that I received, uh, when I transferred to the University of Michigan

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after the war, they gave me something like. 55 hours credit. We had a lot of physics and meteorology and And It was a little generous I thought for what we learned, but. You didn't give it back. Why did you choose the University of Michigan? Well, I

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went back to after the war, my wife was. Pregnant and very unwell, I went back to Fremont, Nebraska. And we lived with her parents. Excuse me, when were you married? I missed this. I was married after I was commissioned. As an insulin and after I received

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my. Abeli, Abelius wings, and that was 19. 40 5 February of 45, I guess, or January. I don't remember. Well, OK, um. So then you went back to her. She was pregnant, you said Fremont, Fremont. OK. I went back to Fremont, Nebraska to Midland College for

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one semester. And there I Resumed my pre-law. Because this oratorical lawyer teacher. Seemed like uh An enviable sort of life and I, I wanted to be around books. I want to read. Uh, we only had two books in my home, the Bible and a book, a

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picture book about World War 1 that my father had bought. Uh, and there were some in the attic some novels, girls' novels that my mother had had which I didn't read. Those were books were basically put away, so that's, uh, that was a reading, so I

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was pretty starved for reading, and I loved Shakespeare a great deal. In high school we had a good Shakespearean teachers fabulous. And uh so I thought that I saw the lawyer's life, especially since he was didn't have much business as a kind of a Scholarly Professional

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life. So, and Everyone advised me at the time that the best law school was the University of Michigan. So that's why I decided to go to Michigan. And I hitchhiked there during the winter from Nebraska. We're, we're talking about the winter of 46 then 45. The

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war would have ended in the summer of 45. That's right. Decommissioner I don't know what we call demobbed or what do we call it? In the United States when you go out of the service. I don't remember. Uh, anyway, uh, I, and then I had the

00:23:21.400 - 00:23:44.880

GI pill. All right. And I went back to Midland College on that. And I had been a very desultory high school student, but I was a pretty good college student. Mostly A's, that sort of thing. Would you have gone to college without the GI Bill? I

00:23:44.880 - 00:23:57.560

went to college before without the GI Bill. I mean, would you have been able to go back? With a wife and a child and all that. I probably would have gone back and worked part time to graduate, but I certainly wouldn't have gone on to get

00:23:57.560 - 00:24:22.020

a PhD. I wouldn't have had that much money, but it turned out that, uh, the child died. It was uh Uh, born, stillborn with a quarter around its neck, incompetent doctor. So I might have gone on, but I don't. And I don't know I, I didn't

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graduate from Midland. But I see, I went there And I would have continued because my wife without a Child could have worked and she did subsequently because the GIB already didn't support you that much. You said you were a good student at Michigan? I was a

00:24:43.300 - 00:25:02.840

good student, so I only had 2.5 years at this point when I hitchhiked to Michigan. And what happened there wouldn't happen today with the greater bureaucracy is there was a trap that was a Admissions officer, a fellow named Smith. I think his name was Homer. I

00:25:02.840 - 00:25:28.090

can't remember for sure. And, uh, I hitchhiked and I carried with me a copy of Paradise Lost and other poems of Milton to read along the way. And uh I asked. If I could see Smith. And yes, you could go and see him. That was cold.

00:25:28.220 - 00:25:43.940

It was nice to get inside because, uh, then I met an old buddy of mine in the Navy. I got some room there and Fred Sompkin let me into his room who teaches history now at Cornell. Uh, shared his room with me. He was a philosophy

00:25:43.940 - 00:26:08.470

student at the time. Whom I can subsequently because I transferred from law school out and became good friends. He always asks me what have they decided about Gsendi now. He's one of those lost. Uh I Asked whether I could get into the law school and I

00:26:08.470 - 00:26:31.140

only had 2.5 years. And they don't allow people into law school unless you're a graduate. Graduated So, but I brought my transcript with me and he saw my copy of. Paradise Lost, um, which is a poem he liked too, so we started talking about Milton. He

00:26:31.140 - 00:26:51.380

saw my grades and he said, well, this is unusual. I said you'll do all right. We'll admit you for you can start. The next term So I hitchhiked back and And we went to Michigan. To go, I went to go to law school. which I subsequently

00:26:51.380 - 00:27:10.540

hated. Wasn't going to be the scholar of life. It's a trade school, even the University of Michigan, which is a much more theoretical place. I mean, most people just train you for the bar. Michigan like. Yale and Harvard had an international as well as a national

00:27:10.540 - 00:27:27.790

audience for students, you know, it was one of those places where you Learned a great deal more than just passing the bar. It was just to jump ahead, you know, a little bit, was this law training ever to come in handy? Later on when you became

00:27:27.790 - 00:27:46.110

a union leader at San Francisco State. Uh, I, I suppose that it did, especially, uh, torts from Ly, who was the number one tort man in the United States. Ly, what is, is that a person's name, Mr. Ly. He had the standard tort text, I see,

00:27:46.590 - 00:28:09.620

and, uh, he was kind of like. The man in the Paper Chase, you remember the Paper Chase movie, uh, relentless, and everybody, he'd go around and pick people at random, make sure everybody talked, and, uh, they would. You'd have to be responsible for giving your analysis.

00:28:11.030 - 00:28:29.440

Of the case and what the facts were. And what law you think applied and what arguments you would give. So, you know, it was a real classical package. Well, getting back to my question, was this the kind of thing that was literally helpful or just in

00:28:29.440 - 00:28:55.820

the same way all your education was helpful? I think it was more like uh agen education and critical thinking. OK. I wouldn't say it was specifically helpful. I suppose I learned a few law terms that you bend around and fake things. Who was the defendant? Defendant.

00:29:00.050 - 00:29:19.430

Yeah, no, I wouldn't say so. In any case, you did shift back to philosophy. I never took a philosophy course. At this time, you remember, I was still struggling with my faith in my head. I had no faith but believed that I should continue to believe

00:29:20.130 - 00:29:33.330

and. Or why you became interested in Studying philosophy at the University of Michigan. Yeah.