United Mine Workers

The United Mine Workers appears in the account through its president, John L. Lewis: his role in building a new labor organization, his changing political alignment, and the wartime strikes that deepened his conflict with the administration. The union’s history in this evidence is therefore closely bound to the wider realignment of American labor and politics.

Leadership and the CIO

In 1935, while president of the United Mine Workers, John L. Lewis broke with the American Federation of Labor and formed the Committee for Industrial Organization. The new body became the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1938. This sequence places the United Mine Workers at the center of a major institutional split in the labor movement, while distinguishing the union itself from the broader organization Lewis helped establish.

Political realignment

Lewis initially supported Franklin D. Roosevelt, but backed Republican Willkie in the 1940 election. After Willkie’s defeat, Lewis resigned as president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The account thus records a political break as well as an organizational one: Lewis’s departure from the CIO presidency followed his electoral choice, while the evidence does not say that he left the United Mine Workers.

Wartime conflict

Strikes by the United Mine Workers during the war further intensified the enmity between Lewis and the administration. The union’s role in those disputes made labor conflict part of the broader political tensions surrounding Lewis, extending his opposition beyond the earlier split with the American Federation of Labor and his later break with Roosevelt.