Martha Washington
First Lady of the United States from 1789 to 1797
John L. Lewis
American labor leader (1880-1969)
John Llewellyn Lewiswas an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of Americafrom 1920 to 1960. A major player in the history of coal mining, he was the driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which established the United Steel Workers of America and helped organize millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s, during the Great Depression.
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About the John L. Lewis
John Llewellyn Lewiswas an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of Americafrom 1920 to 1960. A major player in the history of coal mining, he was the driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which established the United Steel Workers of America and helped organize millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. After resigning as head of the CIO in 1941, thus keeping his promise of resignation if President Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the 1940 election against Wendell Willkie, Lewis took the United Mine Workers out of the CIO in 1942 and in 1944 took the union into the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
Lewis was a Republican, but he played a major role in helping Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt win a landslide victory for the US presidency in 1936. He was an isolationist, and broke with Roosevelt in 1940 on FDR’s anti-Nazi foreign policy. Lewis was an effective, aggressive fighter and strike leader who gained high wages for his membership while steamrolling over his opponents, including the United States government. Lewis was one of the most controversial and innovative leaders in the history of labor, gaining credit for building the industrial unions of the CIO into a political and economic powerhouse to rival the AFL. But during World War II, he was widely criticized by calling nationwide coal strikes, which critics believed to be damaging to the American economy and war effort.
His massive leonine head, forest-like eyebrows, firmly set jaw, powerful voice, and ever-present scowl thrilled his supporters, angered his enemies, and delighted cartoonists. Coal miners for 40 years hailed him as their leader, whom they credited with bringing high wages, pensions and medical benefits. After his successor died shortly after taking office, Lewis hand-picked Tony Boyle, a miner from Montana, to take the presidency of the union in 1963.
15 Quotes by John L. Lewis
- 1.
The steel workers have now buried their dead, while the widows weep and watch their orphaned children become objects of public charity. The murder of these unarmed men has never been publicly rebuked by any authoritative officer of the state or federal government.
John L. LewisAmerican labor leader (1880-1969)
- 2.
While the men of the steel industry were going through blood and gas in defense of their rights and their homes and their families, elsewhere on the far-flung C.I.O. front the hosts of labor were advancing and intelligent and permanent progress was being made.
John L. LewisAmerican labor leader (1880-1969)
- 3.
Workers have kept faith in American institutions. Most of the conflicts, which have occurred have been when labor’s right to live has been challenged and denied.
John L. LewisAmerican labor leader (1880-1969)
- 4.
The men in the steel industry who sacrificed their all were nor merely aiding their fellows at home but were adding strength to the cause of their comrades in all industry.
John L. LewisAmerican labor leader (1880-1969)
- 5.
But the Committee for Industrial Organizations is here. It is now henceforth a definite instrumentality, destined greatly to influence the lives of our people and the internal and external course of the republic.
John L. LewisAmerican labor leader (1880-1969)
- 6.
The real breeders of discontent and alien doctrines of government and philosophies subversive of good citizenship are such as these who take the law into their own hands.
John L. LewisAmerican labor leader (1880-1969)
- 7.
The organized workers of America, free in their industrial life, conscious partners in production, secure in their homes and enjoying a decent standard of living, will prove the finest bulwark against the intrusion of alien doctrines of government.
John L. LewisAmerican labor leader (1880-1969)
- 8.
Unionization, as opposed to communism, presupposes the relation of employment; it is based upon the wage system and it recognizes fully and unreservedly the institution of private property and the right to investment profit.
John L. LewisAmerican labor leader (1880-1969)
- 9.
Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America.
John L. LewisAmerican labor leader (1880-1969)
- 10.
This is true only because the purposes and objectives of the Committee for Industrial Organization find economic, social, political and moral justification in the hearts of the millions who are its members and the millions more who support it.
John L. LewisAmerican labor leader (1880-1969)
- 11.
Out of the agony and travail of economic America the Committee for Industrial Organization was born.
John L. LewisAmerican labor leader (1880-1969)
- 12.
If there is to be peace in our industrial life let the employer recognize his obligation to his employees – at least to the degree set forth in existing statutes.
John L. LewisAmerican labor leader (1880-1969)
- 13.
The organization and constant onward sweep of this movement exemplifies the resentment of the many toward the selfishness, greed and the neglect of the few.
John L. LewisAmerican labor leader (1880-1969)
- 14.
The workers of the nation were tired of waiting for corporate industry to right their economic wrongs, to alleviate their social agony and to grant them their political rights. Despairing of fair treatment, they resolved to do something for themselves.
John L. LewisAmerican labor leader (1880-1969)
- 15.
In the steel industry the corporations generally have accepted collective bargaining and negotiated wage agreements with the Committee for Industrial Organization.
John L. LewisAmerican labor leader (1880-1969)