Lewis, John Llewellyn

LEWIS, JOHN LLEWELLYN

John L. Lewis (1880–1969) began his working life as a coal miner, working like his father did for low wages in dangerous situations in an unregulated mining industry. He realized early that organizing his fellow mine workers into a common union of shared self-interest was the only way to fight the business practices that had created the circumstances he and other mine workers faced. Eventually, he became the president of the United Mine Workers (UMW), the national union of miners, and later the first president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations(CIO), the first unionized affiliation of industrial workers in the United States.

John Llewellyn Lewis was born in 1880, one of six children born to Thomas and Ann Lewis, in Lucas, Iowa. His father was a coal miner, a Welsh immigrant to the United States. The family moved often, following the availability of work from one coal-mining community to another. Lewis's childhood was filled with his family's continual struggle for financial security. Only because his father had obtained a steady job as a policeman in Des Moines, Iowa for a few years, was Lewis able to attend high school for three and a half years.

Lewis became involved with the organization of the miner's union in Lucas, Iowa, when he was 17. He continued to work in the mines, but he did not settle into serious union organizing efforts until 1908, at age 28. He moved with his wife to Panama, Illinois, and there became involved in union activities. With the help of his five brothers, Lewis was promoted to spokesman for the UMW.

A year later the UMW, seeking passage of mine safety laws, appointed Lewis as their state lobbyist in Illinois,. In 1910 Lewis was made president of his union local in Panama, Illinois, one of the 10 largest union locals in the state. By the next year he had became a full-time organizer for the national organization of craft and skilled-labor unions known as the American Federation of Labor (AFL). He remained with the AFL for six years. His reputation grew as a fierce and progressive voice speaking powerfully on behalf of those who were then a part of U.S. organized labor.

By 1920 Lewis was elected president of the UMW, and he guided the union of dwindling U.S. mine workers through a long period of decline in the 1920s. He held the union together during a time when U.S. industry moved to prevent further labor organizing. It was an era of cheap labor for industry, which was able to use newly immigrated workers from the southern United States and Europe. The rapid introduction of machinery to business during the 1920s also contributed to the decline of organized labor. The increasing use of machines threatened jobs, and many workers gave up their union activities in favor of preserving their employment. By the end of the 1920s Lewis had obtained absolute control over what was left of the organized mine workers in the United States.

When the United States experienced the Great Depression (1929–1939) after the stock market crash of 1929, Lewis began to fight to keep control of his union. He had to fend off new and aggressive communist labor organizers, as well as union opportunists representing a variety of reactionary labor positions. But, he held the threadbare UMW together.

After Franklin Roosevelt (1933–1945) was elected president of the United States in 1932, Lewis began to regain a large new membership in the UMW, based on Roosevelt's efforts to re-ignite the U.S. economy by mobilizing the industrial forces of the United States back into action with government aid. As part of Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), administered by the National Recovery Administration (NRA), a provision of the NIRA, known as "section 7(a)," guaranteed labor's right to organize unions during this time in an overall effort to not only establish codes of fair competition for business, but also to provide safeguards for labor. Section 7(a) gave the right to all employees to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, without coercion. Labor unions immediately grew in number and size, including the UMW.

By 1933 most UMW miners were working a fiveday week, eight hours a day, for the first time in their lives. At that time Lewis was moving in the direction of organizing all U.S. labor by industry, and not by their occupations or skills. By 1935 after the AFL had refused to include industrial laborers into their union, Lewis began to aggressively organize the neglected laborers in the great mass-production industries like steel, automobiles, rubber, oil, lumber, aluminum, and textiles. In conjunction with other labor leaders, Lewis began to put together the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1936. CIO managed victories in the steel and auto industries between 1936 and 1937 led to a massive membership in the CIO. After that a gradual and very difficult affiliation began, eventually joining the AFL with the CIO in an international union known as the AFL-CIO in 1954.

John L. Lewis fought throughout his adult life for the dignity of U.S. labor. On balance, Lewis succeeded in his efforts. By using "people power" to fight the raw power of money and business influence, Lewis' creation of an international CIO lead to one of the first example of a consolidation of unions built on the efforts of industrial workers. His achievements in acquiring labor benefits for his union's members were eventually integrated into national policy, as when the Roosevelt administration created legislation to provide social security for the elderly and the disabled. Though this legislation was not due to Lewis' efforts alone, he was one of the first voices at the turn of the twentieth century to advocate for these measures and to see them become a part of life in the United States. John Lewis died in 1969.

See also: American Federation of Labor, Coal Industry, Congress of Industrial Organizations, Labor Movement, Labor Unionism, National Industrial Recovery Act, National Recovery Administration, United Mine Workers

FURTHER READING

Alinsky, Saul D. John L. Lewis, An Unauthorized Biography. New York: Vintage Book, 1970.

Bernstein, Irving. The Lean Years. New York: Houghton Press, 1965.

Brody, Davis. Workers in Industrial America. New York: Oxford Press, 1980.

Dubofsky, Melvyn and Warren Van Tine. John L. Lewis, A Biography. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1986.

Fraser, Steven. Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor. New York: Free Press, 1991.