International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

John L. Lewis, leader of the United Mine Workers Union, consolidated the workers' movement in mass production industries of the early twentieth century and emerged as leader of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), becoming the most influential figure in organized labor in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. He was born in 1880 in the small village of Cleveland, Iowa, to immigrant parents from South Wales, both families having left their lives in the coal-mining principality of Great Britain in search of better lives in America. The details of Lewis's life immediately after leaving high school are unclear. Over the next decade, he tried numerous jobs including coal mining and managing a small theater (where he also performed on occasion); he also made an unsuccessful run for mayor, and tried and failed at business. In 1908, Lewis and his extended family, including his parents and brothers, moved to Panama, Illinois, another coal-mining town, though this one was both larger than Cleveland and a community of numerous ethnic residents. The English Protestants dominated the municipal and union politics there, giving the Lewis family an opportunity they took advantage of. Within ten years, auditors would describe the thefts of the local's treasury by the Lewis clan as “one of the widest conspiracy cases in the United Mine Workers on record.” This had no ill effect ... log in or subscribe to read full text