Transcript
Ah Quon McElrath, Hawaiian Strikes, esp. 1946
Interview by Robynn Takayama
Date:
1 Disc, 1 Track – 53:30
TRACK 1 – 53:30
ROBYNN: …descriptions that might support the workers’ claims that the work was like slavery?
AH QUON: Actually the business interests that came to Hawaii with the missionaries felt that sugar was the lifeline of the new territory. And at that time they enacted the Masters and Servants act in 1850 and that was because with the coming of Captain Cook in 1778, most of our Hawaiians who did not have immunity to western diseases died off. So the Masters and Servants act was a cheap way of getting immigrants to Hawaii so that they could man the lifeline of sugar plantations which were growing at a very rapid rate. It started off in 1852 when about 175 Chinese were imported from China because of the Taiping Revolution and the Opium War with England they were able to get the Chinese over. Although clearly there were some Chinese who worked on the island of Kauai before that time in the Kaloa sugar company. Which was run by Ladd and company. After the Chinese were brought in, many other groups were brought in. the Japanese were brought in. about five thousand Puerto Ricans were brought in. but they found that it was much too costly to import Puerto Rican workers because they went down to the gulf, replaced on ships and then on trains, across the country and it was much too expensive to import Puerto Rican workers. They also imported, under the Masters and Servants act, Portuguese primarily from the Azores island, a lot more than they did Puerto Ricans. And as a matter of fact, the Portuguese were the ones who became the lunas on the field, so that by the end of the 19th century, we had all kinds of people coming to Hawaii, including the Filipino group which was the last group to come to Hawaii. They also imported a few Russians. They imported Scots. They included also Germans. They included the Britishers. A few French, not too many. And all of these of course became the middle class on the plantations. They became the so-called lunas, they became the sub-managers on plantations so that it was very very difficult for people of color to become head workers on plantations. Mostly they were the so-called fair-colored group as for example, the Portuguese became the lunas. They also became the skilled artisans in the garages of the sugar plantations. The over seventy sugar plantations. And because there was also discrimination against the Chinese, for example, and other people of color, the trade unions, which began to form in the state of Hawaii, railed against the sugar planters who imported so many people of color and as a matter of fact, as a result of some of the complaints of the trade unions in 1882, I believe, they had an oriental exclusion act, which meant that the Chinese could not come to Hawaii.
ROBYNN: Contract laboring – uprisings about living conditions. Describe.
AH QUON: Let me just think that. How did I end up with? Oh the oriental exclusion act, that’s right. During the period when they were importing workers, mind you, the penal code was devised so that a worker who came here under the Masters and Servants act who was jailed for the infraction of the law, when he was released he was asked to serve twice the amount of the contract. As you well know, the contracts were from three to five years in length and the pay was from three to five dollars per month. So far as these contract laborers were concerned and indeed, the working conditions on plantations were such that they resulted in much of the early infractions of the so-called contracts under which these workers were signed up to work for plantations. As early as in the early 1800s, for example, I believe in 1841, Hawaiian workers, for example, could not stand the working conditions on plantations. They were paid sixteen cents per hour in scrip and they were told that they must spend their money on the sugar, in stores which were put up by the sugar industry. They struck and said we want twenty five cents paid to us in cash and we want to spend the money in our own way. Now that was the first indication of the fact that workers were unhappy with the working conditions. Then in 1909 there was a very big strike. The Japanese formed a higher wage society. It was a group that was headed by the intellectuals, so to speak. People who at that particular time were connected with the newspapers. As you well know there were twelve Japanese newspapers so that workers throughout Hawaii could learn what was happening to sugar workers throughout the various groups where there were sugar plantations organized. And at that time they said we must be paid a decent wage. Clearly a Filipinos who came in as the latest large group of individuals joined in with the Japanese group, but they were not successful. As a matter of fact that was a strike that was lost. In 1920 again for the first time in the life of workers who tried to join a union we had the rank and file unionists who said our workers need to be treated with dignity and respect and for the first time, in a collective bargaining, they raised the question of maternity rights for women. In other words they said women who have children must be given time off before they return to work. And it was because as workers on the sugar plantations they were well-aware of what was happening to the women. And the 1920s strike was joined by Filipino workers who also formed a union. Unfortunately at the time most of the workers were evicted from their homes, and there was a flu epidemic going on so that those who marched for example from Waipahu to Alepac, many of them died because they did not have medical coverage at the time. However, it is interesting that as a result of that particular strike the sugar industry did what was called a welfare drive on the workers. They tried to improve the working conditions on plantations, they tried to improve the health care that was given to workers. They were well-aware that the lunas beat the workers in the field. And they said well, maybe what we’ve got to do is to do something differently so that we can in fact take care of these workers and their concerns. Now, mind you, at that particular time there was no doubt in their minds that workers, the importation of workers didn’t mean anything to them. They wanted to make sure that they got workers in at the very best price that they could get. As a matter of fact, it was after the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 that the Masters and Servants act was erased from the books. Otherwise they would have continued to import workers from many different lands in order to exploit them. As a matter of fact, during the Civil War, when Hawaii was producing a lot of sugar we felt, that is, the sugar industry felt, that it should get special dispensation from the United States Government. Even during the 1848 discovery of gold many of our people left the sugar plantations to work in California because they felt they could get a better wage just as for example many Chinese workers left Hawaii to work on the railroads and they helped build the American railway system. It is interesting that in 1878 when the reciprocity treaty was enacted by the US, the sugar industry’s main concern was that we should be able to export sugar to the US without a tariff. And at that particular time the US government said sure, we’d be happy to do it but you must let us do with Pearl Harbor that which we want to do. At the same time, as you well know, Great Britain, France, even Russia were interested in Pearl Harbor and that, as a matter of fact, pretty much sealed the way the US looked at Hawaii. And as you well know, in many instances all you have to do is to mention, not only the Reciprocity treaty, but December 7th, 1941 and you can get almost anything you want in the US congress because they foresee Pearl Harbor as the way we can exorcise Germany over the Asiatic continent.
ROBYNN: 1946 strike. Hilo Massacre. Racism involved with mainland unions initially?
AH QUON: What you got to remember is that Harry Komoku was involved in the 1934 strike of the longshoreman and the general strike. He went to see Harry Bridges, who was then the president of the ILA local in San Francisco, which subsequently he became head of the western division and then when John L. Lewis came in with his CIO, the ILA chapter moved into the CIO and it became the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union. At the time when Harry Komoku was involved in the ’34 strike, on the mainland, he was a seaman, as many of our people became, that joined the ships and take off to the mainland. He wrote, when he knew that it was important to have a strike, he went to see Harry Bridges and Harry Bridges said you go back to Hawaii and you organize a union there in all of the ports and we’ll talk business. Well, when Harry Komoku returned to Hawaii he helped to organize the port in Hilo. There was also a port in Kauahai and because he had organized the ILA chapter on the island of Hawaii he was local 137 I believe of the ILA and pretty soon the workers on Maui got interested, the workers on Oahu became interested, and that is how the ILW was formed here in Hawaii.
ROBYNN: Why did ILWU invest in Hawaii and why?
AH QUON: All right. After we had the ILWU in Hawaii organized, even with the August 1938 so called Hilo Massacre, the longshoreman in the Honolulu chapter felt that they could not advance unless sugar, which was the basic industry in Hawaii were organized. They went to see Harry Bridges but Harry said look, we have too many problems on the west coast. Meanwhile, the national labor relations board had come to Hawaii under a Mr. Egan in which he studied the conditions on the Honolulu waterfront, issued a report which was subsequently validated by the Dept. of Labor under James Shoemaker, who incidentally became a big CEO with one of the banks in Hawaii, but he validated the question of the longshoreman problems in Hawaii. And during the war, it was, there was very little going on, even though Egan and the Shoemaker report indicated that longshoreman were treated badly on the waterfront, as a matter of fact Egan called this a kind of feudal state, I believe he called it. But in the meantime longshore just continued to try to organize. I was interested and I was involved in that early organizing of the longshoremen and then the war broke out. When the war broke out, almost nothing occurred except toward the end of the war my husband and I were organizing several places, including the inter-island navigational steamship company, which was the site of the August 1, 1938 Hilo Massacre. We organized the Hawaiian tuna packers, American Can, which was a can manufacturing company, and we also organized Hawaiian pineapple company. One Saturday a bunch of us sat around the kitchen table and we said look, here is the organizing strategy we should follow, and so that was organized. Well, in 1944 when the longshoremen again raised the question of organizing sugar, that was when Harry Bridges sent over Matt Meehan, who was a secretary-treasurer of the international union, to come on over and study the situation. By that time, Jack Hall had already come to the islands, Jack Hall who was the father of the ILWU in Hawaii. He had organized for example the Kauai Progressive League, which was a political action committee on the island of Kauai, which beat the pants of a plantation manager, organized two chapters of the agricultural workers on the island of Kauai, and he had become during the war an inspector for the Department of Labor and industrial relations. And he was also a member of the police commission – this person who at one time was beaten up by a police sergeant on the elevator in 1938 when he participated in the strike of the inland boatman’s union, to organize which was a strike against the inter-island steamship navigation company. So there are sort of ironies in the whole business. But in any event, when Matt Meehan went back to the US, he said that indeed, sugar was ready for organizing, and at that particular time they hired Jack Hall. He was able to get accommodations at Pier eleven. He set up the whole thing. He set up a political action committee with Marshall McGeehan, who was with the ITU, the international typographical union, as director, he hired my husband as the information director and he said look, we’ve just got to get going. He pulled into the whole situation longshoremen who said look, we’re going to go on out and organize the sugar workers. People like John Enilias, Jack Kuano, Jack Osakoda, James Tanaka, all of those, and Ben Kah, Harvey Nuh, Fred Kamehomehoa, all of those people who went out in a concerted fashion and organized all of the workers in sugar.
ROBYNN: How?
AH QUON: I’ll talk about that. At the time, Jack Hall who knew the fair labor standards act very well, also informed our international office that he was going to file a suit against the sugar industry accusing them of not following the dictates, the provisions of the fair labor standards act.
ROBYNN: What is that act?
AH QUON: The Fair Labor Standards Act raised the question, was enacted in 1935, which said that all workers engaged in interstate commerce must be paid a specific wage. At the time it was twenty five cents an hour. And Jack Hall made the point that because sugar was engaged in interstate commerce, that all of the workers in fact should have been paid that amount of money, twenty five cents per hour. At the time they were paid only nineteen cents an hour. It was an interesting gimmick because the sugar industry said that all of the perquisites that it furnished workers: free rent, free kerosene and health care came up to six cents per hour so if you added that to the nineteen cents, they had in fact paid the workers twenty five cents an hour. And Jack Hall says that doesn’t cut any ice with us. So he filed a suit and as you well know, it was finally settled at one point five million dollars with the attorney’s fees paid outside of the one point five million. Now that particular thing was going on while we were organizing workers at the same time and the companies did not, all of them did not insist that we had to go through an election before the national labor relations board. Some of them honored the so-called ‘card-filing system’ which as you well know is under fire now with the NLRB in Washington. But we won almost all of the elections that were held with eighty-five, ninety, ninety-five percent, some of them at one hundred percent. In other words, because Hawaiian sugar workers were frozen to their jobs at their present rate of pay under martial law because of World War II they were anxious to say, by golly, we want to make use of the national labor relations act and we want to cut out this thing of being frozen to our jobs and so one of the kinds of things, one of the reasons why we were able to win the negotiations was everybody was frozen to their jobs – Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Filipinos, Spaniards, whatever group worked on sugar plantations. And they could see that because the world war II conditions that they did the same kind of work, especially the artisans, as the so-called defense workers were paid, and why in the world were we paid only nineteen cents an hour or in some places, thirty-five cents an hour when the war workers were getting a dollar seventy five cents an hour.
ROBYNN: Describe signing union cards.
AH QUON: At the time that our longshoremen and sugar workers began to organize, almost all sugar workers were in what is called segregated camps. It was Portuguese camp, Chinese camp, Japanese camp, Filipino camps or whatever it was to indicate that they were members of one ethnic group that were placed in a camp. Whether or not the employers segregated them one, in order that they would be able to keep their identity or whether they segregated them because they didn’t want them to talk with other racial groups and compare notes, is doesn’t make any difference. Problematical why they did it. But because they were segregated in camps we were able to get leaders in the camps. And get them organized into the ILWU. It was very simple. As a matter of fact, many of these people, let’s say the Filipinos that came from one particular place, let’s say the Locos Norte group, had leaders whom they recognized. And when we said look, you are being exploited by the sugar employers, we are too, we want you to join the union so that we can have some strength and we said the same things to the Japanese so that eventually all of the people came together and as we talked to them, we spoke to them in Japanese we spoke to them in Ilkanu, in Vasayan, it was a massive job of organizing these workers, talking to them about what would go into a contract, or after a contract was signed, how we explain these things to the workers. And that’s how we did it.
ROBYNN: Ethnic-based organizing. Distrust among ethnicities?
AH QUON: It was very simple. You are all economically exploited, whether you are Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos or whatever it is, and people working people recognize this thing. That they are exploited. They looked at the fact that they were frozen to their jobs during World War II, they did not make any increases in their wages during World War II and yet they saw everybody else in the rest of the community making much more than they did. And so it was strictly a matter of we are workers. I don’t think anybody needed to tell them. All of the information that was given to them was look, you are exploited, what are you going to do about it?
ROBYNN: Describe pre-strike how ILWU built worker skills to prepare?
AH QUON: All we did one, first of all, we had our political action committee which was going on, and we were able to get the legislature to pass a number of things which had never before been done. For example, as a result of the Kauai progressive league, we got this one senator who beat a plantation manager to introduce a bill for allowing the organizing of agricultural workers. That bill was introduced in the 1939 session of the legislature. It didn’t pass until 1945. now, by 1945 we had signed the first contract with the employers – not much, they recognized the union, a few things here and there, and but we knew that the big fight was coming the following year because it was a one-year contract, and that was when we began to go out, talk to the workers and say look, we don’t know what’s going to happen in the 1946 negotiations, but we’ve got to be prepared. Save your money, get your food together, keep in touch with each other so we know what’s going on. And that’s what it was. Simple. It was pure simple plan of let’s find out what’s going on. Let’s save our money. Let’s put things together so that when there is a strike and we don’t know how long it’s going to last you can begin to hold tough against the twenty-six sugar plantations. It was that simple.
ROBYNN: How strike started & demands.
AH QUON: We asked that one, we get rid of the perquisite system, because we felt that was a way in which the plantation owners could hold sway over the workers. We asked for a wage increase which would put us, which would take care of the so-called perquisites that they gave us so that we could pay for our medical plan, pay for our rent, and pay for our electricity. Now, it’s very simple. One, medical plan which was at that particular juncture in the form of plantations that had their own hospitals, their own clinics and had doctors who were employees of the plantations, cost us at the end of the strike, something like seventy-five cents per single member, one fifty if you were married, two twenty-five if you were married and had children. House rents – we brought in a consultant from the mainland who looked at all of the sugar plantations and what it was is they had rents we started I believe at fifteen dollars and fifty cents, I’ve forgotten exactly what was the lowest rent, and I think the highest rent was thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents for a home which had three bedrooms. Course most of the homes were old homes anyway, frame buildings. At one time there were outhouses, there were no toilet facilities, but during the 1920 strike when they figured they had to make improvement to the quote, welfare of workers, they began actually to improve on the nature of houses that were in the sugar, on sugar plantations at that particular moment. So that it is fascinating that at the end when the period that the sugar industry got rid of their hospitals, their clinics and home ownership, we had sugar planters for example, I mean sugar workers for example at a place like Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar company, which gave a lot of land and built what is called dream city. We had sugar workers who were able to buy two or three homes, cash mind you, and I remember here on the island of Oahu, when the state built homes, so-called low-cost housing under the public housing act, our sugar workers were able to pay cash for a lot of their homes, and they still lived in their plantation homes at the same time, rented these homes out to outsiders or to their children who needed housing facilities, so that as a matter of fact it was because of the ILWU, when we were clearly able to have people own their homes, buy their own cars, buy refrigerators and send their children to college. It was through this particular union, the international longshoremen’s and warehousemen’s union, known as it was at the time, it’s now International Longshore and Warehouse union, that we were able for the first time to get on a general basis, sugar workers who could send their children to college. And it was because we were able to one, get recognition of the job that their parents were doing. And get them paid at one time the so-called highest-paid sugar workers in the entire world, because they not only got a medical plan, they got a pension plan, and during that period, when technology took over, we were able to put together a so-called voluntary repatriation fund at which point we were able to send workers back to their homeland with x number of dollars according to the years of service that they bought. Even under the pension plan we were able to send workers back, and it was mostly Filipino workers who could not become citizens, back to the Philippines with major pension agreements under which we were able to get sugar, the pension payments considered under the so-called capital gains section of the internal revenue code so that when they arrived in the Philippines they became literally kings of the barrios to which they returned. And bought a lot of land. We sent our business agents back to the Philippines to see how our retired employees were doing, and most of them continued to receive their social security because they had continued to fulfill all of the requirements for social security payments and when they came back they said my god, these people are living like they’re really kings. They’ve been able to buy land with the pension settlements that we were able to send them back to the Philippines with and with the monthly social security coming in, they were able to live very, very good lives and so that is what we gave a lot of our sugar workers. As a matter of fact I was amused when the social security person came back from the Philippines and said they met with us there at the ILWU and said, in all of the years that we’ve paid social security to Filipino workers in the Philippines, she says, there’s never been a death. Of a recipient. And she mentioned to us that there was one woman who was clever enough so that when her husband died, she cut off his thumb, preserved it in formaldehyde, I kid you not, and she was able to receive social security payments because at the time, he just used his thumb. Thumbprint. And later on the social security office had offices not just in Manila but they had branch offices in the Vasalles, in the le Locos Norte things, so that subsequently I don’t know what happened but I rather suspect that more social security people died after they instituted those offices.
ROBYNN: Strategies during ’46 strike. Scabs. Focus on immigrants, how ILWU counteracted scabs.
AH QUON: After World War II, the sugar planters found that they had lost a lot of workers, so for the first time in an understanding with Julius Krug, who was then secretary of interior of the US government, they allowed for 6000 Filipino workers to be brought in from the Philippines. We had heard about it. Consequently we then contracted with the marine cooks and stewards union to hire a number of our workers, ILW seamen to work on the ships. And they did that so during the months of January through June, 1946 when the Marine Falcon and the Mounawilly brought workers in from the Philippines, our workers were on those ships, so by the time they arrived in Hawaii, all of them were signed up into the ILWU. So there was absolutely no question as to the strike, which occurred on September 1, 1946 that there was any possibility that there would be scabs. The Filipino workers who started working on the sugar plantations said look, we went through several years of extreme privation in the Philippines. We lived in the mountains, we ate roots, we ate whatever insects we could catch, and if we were to go on strike here, no matter what basis you would feed us, we can live the same kind of life as we did in the Philippines. At one time there was a severe question as to whether or not, because our membership was largely Japanese and a lot of them were in positions of leadership because by that time the Japanese were about 40% of the total population. They said it makes no difference to us, we are on strike, we will fight together. So that generally speaking, I heard of no incidents of which Filipinos working during the strike with Japanese leaders ever had any problems with them. As a matter of fact, when we went out on strike, it was fascinating. Most of our, we established soup kitchens in all of the struck plantations, 25 of them. Most of those who worked in the sugar, in the soup kitchens were Filipinos. The Japanese used to say; they make the very best cooked rice, the bottoms of it. They said my god, we’ve never ever tasted this, I don’t know what they call it but in any event, you know the bottom of the rice is kind of a hard thing and they said my god, we’ve never tasted anything so good. They were the ones who did a lot of the entertainment during the strike and let’s face it; most of our Japanese had a lot of education, those who came from Japan. They were the ones who did a lot of the bookkeeping and we said my god, give us some figures as to what it costs to run a soup kitchen, and our workers were able to give us figures on what it cost with or without donated funds, with or without unit funds, and it was fantastic what they could do. And the Filipino workers said hey, not to worry, we’ll go on out, we’ll catch the fish, we’ll shoot the boars, we’ll go out and do anything and so our workers, what they did was they helped churches refurbish their buildings, on the island of Kauai they went out to Waipio and they helped the farmers with whatever they had to reap, they went out and caught fish, they caught turtle, they caught everything and so for the first time all of the units in the ILW worked together. It didn’t make a difference whether you were Filipino, Japanese Chinese or whatever it is, they felt that the strike had to be won and they gave their all in order to win the strike. And for me, this was a magnificent illustration of how people of different colors got together and worked to win the strike.
ROBYNN: What was won in the agreement and on a larger level.
AH QUON: I think what we won was we were able to run our lives because we got rid of the perquisite system. Two, we felt that because of the wages that we won, we could then live lives according to the way we wanted without having to buy things at a company store. Without having to feel that the company physician could tell us whether or not we could go on back to work. We had for example, medical committees, which looked into the whole idea of how the medical plan worked out. I remember working with the committees, teaching them how to analyze the reports, which were sent out by the plantation so that we could one, analyze whether people were hurt because of industrial accidents, what we could do about those industrial accidents. How many children were born and as a result of that we were able to say later on gee, what we need are classes on pregnancy, on birth control, all of these kinds of things that had occurred. We also had housing committees as a result of that particular strike, which could look at the houses and sugar camps and say look, we need to have repairs made in this area, in that area, in other areas so that we could live a comfortable life. All of these kinds of things came about as a result of that 1946 strike so that we had equality in the kinds of things that the sugar industry was providing to us. And that’s it. We were treated as human beings probably for the first time in our lives; we had certain amount of equality with them in the way lives were led in sugar camps.
ROBYNN: Identify building blocks in labor history leading to success.
AH QUON: It isn’t anything one single thing. I think the changes in the political economy of the state of Hawaii where it became obvious that for a specific period of time, sugar was important to the lives of our people, became the primary reason why. One, it was also responsible for the fact that for many many years our children did not go on to school simply because one, we needed them in the sugar plantations and two, as the public school system grew, I think more people began to realize that it wasn’t just working on sugar plantations alone that gave us our raison d’etre. We could be other kinds of things so it was a merging of a number of things that were happening in Hawaii in the area of education in the area of outside influences, in the area of political action when we finally were given statehood and people from the outside began to look at Hawaii. And because of statehood they came to the state of Hawaii a number of other kinds of industries, which provided work opportunities for our people. Tourism, for example, however much one thinks about tourism, it was there because the jets came to Hawaii and all kinds of people came to Hawaii and we needed hotel workers, we needed to build hotels, and as a result of that and because sugar’s place was being taken by artificial sugar, by beet sugar, and because it took so long for sugarcane to reach the point where you could crush it and get sugar, I’m sure that members of the sugar industry just weren’t interested in carrying on sugar plantations. All you’ve got to do is look at the fact that sugar plantations began to close very quickly in the 1950s and the last one to remain on the island of Hawaii run by a Mr. Francis Morgan, he put all of his money on it but it happened to be in a place where there was so much rain he couldn’t possibly continue in his place on the island of Hawaii along the Hamekua coast. And right now, you have Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar and A&B plantation which is probably doing well simply because A&B has not only land, which it is starting to build up, it also has Madison Navigation company, and let’s face it, Madison navigation company is the reason why A&B, Alexander and Baldwin is profitable and why HC&S has not yet gone out of business. You have Gay & Robinson, that particular plantation on the island of Hawaii hidden in a valley where they don’t need to worry about irrigation. Whether or not they may continue, who knows? That family may figure it’s not worth our keeping this operation going. So those are the kinds of things that in effect has changed the face of Hawaii and whether or not it will change even further depends on whether the two pineapple plantations, which we have organized and the two sugar plantations will continue.
ROBYNN: Description of organizers into the fields. Covert things.
AH QUON: Yeah, well I guess it makes it more fascinating to talk about those things, but of course when we brought in mainland operations like Frank Thompson, who was a member of the IWW, a well known wobbly, nobody could keep a Frank Thompson down. He went on out and he organized people despite the fact that they said oh gee, you sign a union card and as been indicated many people were hesitant to do it. But as I indicated by the time we were ready to organize sugar, most of them were influenced by what went on in World War II, so they came on out and they signed the cards. There was no secret about it. Everybody knew that the ILWU was in town at that time. So what might have been a covert thing earlier in the game no longer became a covert action. We won every damned election that there was for recognition and we organized everyone except for Gay & Robinson. And Gay & Robinson was organized oh, five or six years ago and it’s one of the plantations that has continued along with HC&S, Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company. So a lot of those things are said simply because they make for a lot of intrigue and it carries on the story of how tough it was to organize. Certainly at one time it was extremely difficult to organize. But by the time the ILWU came, and said we’re going to organize so everybody knew that we were in the game.
ROBYNN: Thank you.