John L. Lewis Quotes

John Llewellyn Lewis was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America from 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 , 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 .

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. Wikipedia  

✵ 12. February 1880 – 11. June 1969
John L. Lewis photo
John L. Lewis: 9   quotes 0   likes

Famous John L. Lewis Quotes

“I have pleaded (labor's) case, not in the quavering tones of a feeble mendicant asking alms, but in the thundering voice of the captain of a mighty host, demanding the rights to which free men are entitled.”

Speech at United Mine Workers convention at Indianapolis (March 1940), quoted in Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren R. Van Tine, John L. Lewis: A Biography (1986), p. 278

“Who gets the bird, the hunter or the dog?”

When asked about the presence of communists and other radicals working as organizers for the Steel Workers Organizing Committee; quoted in Life magazine, October 25, 1954

Similar authors

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. 658
American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Ci…
Franklin D. Roosevelt photo
Franklin D. Roosevelt 190
32nd President of the United States
Black Elk photo
Black Elk 42
Oglala Lakota leader
Rajneesh photo
Rajneesh 76
Godman and leader of the Rajneesh movement
John C. Maxwell photo
John C. Maxwell 145
American author, speaker and pastor
Rick Warren photo
Rick Warren 90
Christian religious leader
Lee Iacocca photo
Lee Iacocca 10
American businessman
Helen Keller photo
Helen Keller 156
American author and political activist
Ronald Reagan photo
Ronald Reagan 264
American politician, 40th president of the United States (i…
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 120
Russian writer