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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Mary Price Adamson, April 19, 1976. Interview G-0001. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

Discovering the office workers' union

Though her boss was extremely anti-union, Adamson and her sister began attending meetings for an office workers' union. This was part of her motivation for visiting the Soviet Union.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Mary Price Adamson, April 19, 1976. Interview G-0001. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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During that time, Teeny had heard about the, it was an office workers union in the AF of L, CIO, the Bookkeepers, Stenographers, and Accountants Union. So she found out where their meetings were held, and she said, "Let's go." So I said, "Okay, let's go." I was just interested in anything. We went, and I was quite interested in that. Later on when the CIO was founded-the Industrial Union things-that group of office workers formed the United Office and Professional Workers, I guess it was called. I was interested in that and was very, very active in it. I brought that up because I was thinking about this trip to Europe. I had begun, from these people that I met in the union, to get perspective because the union was mostly made up of people who worked in the trade union offices. So there were varying degrees of politics in the membership, and there was a perspective on the outside world such as I had not had before. So I was very much interested in going on the trip to Europe and going to the Soviet Union to see for myself what was going on.
MARY FREDERICKSON:
Had you joined the Officeworkers Union?
MARY PRICE ADAMSON:
Oh yes, I had joined the Officeworkers Union of the AF of L Bookkeepers, Stenographers, and Accountants.
MARY FREDERICKSON:
And the Insurance Brokers Association thought that was fine?
MARY PRICE ADAMSON:
No, of course they didn't at all. I had to be very quiet about that and didn't say anything about it at all because the man I worked for,well, I'll just say that he said that he thought that Herbert Hoover was the greatest statesman who ever lived. And so there wasn't much conversation about current affairs.