Interview
Swaity is an extremely dedicated man and a workaholic because of it. I [interviewer James Cavanaugh] interviewed him for three hours in his New York City office on November 15, 1978. He was selected as an interviewee for the Project because of his broad background in the TWUA but particularly because of his long association with the various levels of TWUA organizing.
The Swaity interview is especially useful for his discussion of TWUA organizing philosophies and of the J.P. Stevens campaign. On these two topics Swaity's discussion is much more thorough than any other interviewee's. Swaity also contributed some original viewpoints in his discussion of the Union's two internal disputes. For the 1950-1952 fight he pointed out the role played by geography. During the 1962-1964 fight he was a member of the inner circle of the Administration side.
Abstract
The tapes for this interview have two tracks: a voice track containing the discussion and a time track containing time announcements at intervals of approximately five seconds. The abstract lists, in order of discussion, the topics covered on each tape, and indicates the time-marking at which point the beginning of the particular discussion appears.
Thus, the researcher by using a tape recorder's fast-forward button may find expeditiously and listen to discrete segments without listening to all of the taped discussion. For instance, the user who wishes to listen to the topic on “Causes of the 1950-1952 TWUA Internal Fight” should locate the place on the second track of side one, tape one, where the voice announces the 07:35 time-marking (the voice says at this point, “Seven minutes, thirty-five seconds”), and at this point switch to the first track to hear the discussion. The discussion on “Causes of the 1950-1952 TWUA Internal Fight” continues until approximately 09:25 at which point discussion of the next topic (“The South as a Cause for the 1952 Fight”) begins.
Notice that in most cases sentences beneath each headline explain more about the contents of the topic. For example, the sentences underneath “Causes of the 1950-1952 TWUA Internal Fight” give further details on what appears on the tape between 07:35 and 09:25.
The abstract is designed to provide only a brief outline of the content of the tapes and cannot serve as a substitute for listening to them. However, the abstract when used with the index will help the researcher easily locate distinct topics and discussions among the many minutes of commentary.
Index
There is a master index for most of the TWUA Oral HIstory Project interviews in the collection-level finding aid.
