Lewis, John L. 1880-1969

LEWIS, JOHN L. 1880-1969

President of the united mine workers

Leader

John L. Lewis was the most controversial labor leader and perhaps the most controversial political leader of the 1940s. As a labor leader he brought industrial unionism to many workers who had been previously ignored by trade unions and the American Federation of Labor (AFL), forever changing organized labor in the United States. During the 1940s he did not join the government or the Democratic Party as the newly organized industrial workers and their leaders did, instead charting a different course as an independent. In doing so he became one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's most vocal critics and a lone voice among labor leaders in opposition to the expansion of the federal government.

Individualist

Lewis's background was different from those of many other labor leaders, who had often studied socialist and Marxist thought. In 1948 he said that "there are two great material tasks in life that affect the individual and affect great bodies of men. The first is to achieve or acquire something of value or something that is desirable, and then the second task is to prevent some scoundrel from taking it away from you." Throughout his career Lewis followed his own advice, applying it to himself and to the coal miners he led as president of the United Mine Workers (UMW). A man with a tremendous ego, which in part helps explain his falling-out with Roosevelt in the years leading up to World War II, he transformed the Washington headquarters of the UMW into a constant reminder of his importance by placing a photograph of himself in every passageway, corridor, wall, and office in the building.

Background

During the 1920s Lewis had been a Republican and held a romantic view of rugged individualism. He feared that the state could become too powerful, and he did not bring the UMW into the New Deal coalition, countering the trend of most other labor leaders, who supported Roosevelt and the Democratic Party. He eventually became one of Roosevelt's harshest critics, particularly concerning Roosevelt's drive for war preparations in the late 1930s. In 1939 Lewis used his influence in the labor movement and among left-wing political groups to oppose a third term for the president. At the golden anniversary convention of the UMW held in January 1940 he denounced Roosevelt by saying, "let no politician believe or dream that he is going to solve the unemployment question by dragging America into war."

Critic

In the summer of 1940 Lewis officially refused to support Roosevelt's bid for a third term by promising to resign as president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) if Roosevelt won. He even took the UMW out of the CIO to protest the CIO's increasingly close ties to the Roosevelt administration and the Democratic Party. Lewis's political maneuvering took yet another—and this time more surprising—turn when he endorsed the Republican presidential candidate Wendell L. Willkie. Two weeks after Roosevelt was reelected in 1940, Lewis stepped down as head of the CIO and was replaced by Philip Murray, one of his longtime lieutenants in the UMW. In May 1942 Lewis denounced Murray and ordered all UMW affiliates and officials to withdraw from the CIO.

Activist

After ending his association with the CIO Lewis was free to vent his hostility toward Roosevelt and against the increasing power of the state in American life, becoming the only major labor leader to speak out against government wartime regulations and spending that favored the wealthy and large corporations. He led the UMW in a series of coal strikes in 1943 in an attempt to end government-imposed wage restrictions. His actions were popular among the miners, who staged an unprecedented wave of unauthorized wildcat strikes in 1944 and 1945. However, the leadership of both the CIO and the AFL condemned his militancy. Political leaders did more than condemn his struggle to liberate organized labor from state restraints: Congress increased government control over unions, first through the War Labor Disputes Act of 1943 and then through the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. In the postwar era Lewis continued to use strikes to manipulate the state into advancing the welfare of miners. By creating a national emergency in 1946, for example, he forced the government to seize the mines but got the government to grant the union a welfare and retirement fund, a concession that the private operators had refused to make. Following a series of long and bitter coal strikes in the late 1940s, in which the UMW's adversaries were more often federal officials than coal operators and in which Lewis and his union were legally punished for activities that had been permissible even in the midst of World War II, the elderly labor leader executed a surprising about-face in his labor relations strategy. After three decades during which coal strikes came as predictably as the seasons, a calm came over the coal fields.

A Conservative

During the 1950s Lewis continued to disavow the New Deal and even called for the repeal of the Wagner Act as well as the Taft-Hartley Act, arguing that both were unneeded intrusions into the role of the union. He did believe, however, that the government should promote the health of the industry—and thus the miners—by such actions as coal purchases by the Tennessee Valley Authority. He retired as head of the UMW in 1960 and died on 11 June 1969.

Sources:

Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, John L. Lewis: A Biography, abridged edition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986);

Dubofsky and Van Tine, "John L. Lewis and the Triumph of Mass-Production Unionism," in Labor Leaders in America, edited by Dubofsky and Van Tine (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), pp. 185-206.