John L. Lewis(1880-1969)

John L. Lewis was born in Iowa in 1880. His parents were Welsh immigrants, and his father got a job in the coal mines. He was soon blacklisted by mine owners for protesting the terrible working conditions under which miners labored for little pay and no benefits. Lewis dropped out of grammar school to go to work in the mines, and in 1906 he was appointed a delegate of the United Mine Workers union. In that capacity he traveled to dozens of mine operations around the country and got to see first-hand just how bad life for the average miner really was, and it was an image he carried with him for the rest of his life. In 1918 he became Vice President of the UMW, and two years later he was President. Mine owners who were used to intimidating and bullying timid union leaders--very often foreigners who were ill-educated and from countries where standing up to authority usually got you killed--got a big surprise when they had to deal with Lewis. He was not one to be bullied, took no guff from anyone, had a will of iron--once he staked out a position or a condition there was no power on earth that could move him from it--and he could go head to head with them on just about any issue and turn out to be even more knowledgeable about it than they were. His peak power came with the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom Lewis had strongly supported (on the other hand, he despised Roosevelt's VP, John Nance Garner, calling him an "evil old man").

In 1935 Lewis took the UMW out of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) group and started the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), mainly because he wanted to unionize unskilled labor and the AFL was only interested in the skilled trades. Lewis' efforts were quite successful, especially in Detroit, where after strikes and sit-down actions he managed to unionize many of Detroit's auto workers.

Lewis and Roosevelt split in 1938, when Lewis was in the midst of negotiations with the steel industry. He was expecting Roosevelt's help during the negotiations and didn't get it. Enraged, lhe put his union's backing behind Roosevelt's opponent in the next Presidential election, Wendell Willkie, promising that if Wilkie wasn't elected, he would resign as UMW president. Roosvelt won the 1940 election, and Lewis stepped down.

During World War II Lewis' union struck the coal mines several times, and Lewis even pulled his miners out of the pits altogether on several occasions. The government responded by taking over the mines and fining Lewis and the union more than $2 million for ignoring court orders to return to work.

Lewis retired as president of the UMW in 1959. The last few years of his tenure there were somewhat acrimonious, with several factions accusing him of "selling out" by agreeing to allow automation in the mines, but Lewis saw that the days of coal as a major energy source were ending. UMW membership was dropping as mines were consolidating and in some cases even closing, and oil, gas and even nuclear power had begun replacing coal in many industries.

His almost 40-year reign as president of the United Mine Workers union had resulted in vast improvements in the lives of mine workers. When he took over the union in 1920, the average pay of a miner was $6.00 a day. Miners who were injured at work were promptly fired and had to fend for themselves, there was no such thing as vacations, no sick pay, no pension, working conditions were atrocious--explosions and cave-ins killed and injured thousands of miners annually because companies would not spend money on adequate safety precautions--and workers had virtually no rights (the infamous "company store" system designed to keep workes permanently indebted to their employer originated in the mining industry). When Lewis left in 1960, the average wage had risen to more than $20 a day and miners had some of the best medical coverage, pension system and benefits of any industry in the country.

John L. Lewis died in Washington, DC, in 1989.