Abstract

War or Peace in American Labor?

In recent White House conversations, organizer of Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), John L. Lewis has again injected the issue of one big union into the struggle to bring about peace and unity between the CIO and the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Back in March of 1939, when peace committees from both camps were meeting with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lewis set off the same fireworks, with flare-headline effects. He urged that the AFL and CIO dissolve forthwith, that the "Big Four" Railroad Brotherhoods also disband, and that all three groups be merged into a new Congress of American Labor, the presidency of which was to go to an executive type, such as D.B. Robertson of the Firemen and Enginemen.