American Federation of Labor

The American Federation of Labor is identified chiefly through its rupture with John L. Lewis: in 1935, while president of the United Mine Workers, Lewis broke with the federation and helped form the Committee for Industrial Organization. The reference places the federation within the history of organized labor, while the book’s account concentrates on Lewis’s break and its political aftermath rather than describing the federation’s internal structure or wider activities.

The Split with John L. Lewis

In 1935, Lewis broke with the American Federation of Labor while serving as president of the United Mine Workers. He formed the Committee for Industrial Organization, which became the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1938. The sequence marks a division within organized labor: the federation is the institution Lewis left behind as he helped establish a separate organization.

Political Context

The book situates this organizational break within Lewis’s changing relationship to national politics. Initially a supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt, he backed Republican Willkie in the 1940 election and resigned the presidency of the Congress of Industrial Organizations after Willkie’s defeat. The account thus distinguishes Lewis’s departure from the American Federation of Labor from his later political choices, while showing how both belong to a wider history of labor leadership and political realignment.

Significance in the Account

The American Federation of Labor has a limited but clear role in the book: it is the organization against which Lewis’s break is defined. The evidence does not detail the federation’s policies or subsequent actions; instead, it uses the split to establish the institutional origins of the Committee for Industrial Organization and the later Congress of Industrial Organizations. The focus then shifts to Lewis’s political trajectory and to further conflict between labor and government, including wartime strikes by the United Mine Workers.