Penetrating the bedrock of the Lewis legend

Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine,
John L. Lewis: A Biography (Abridged Edition).
Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press,
1986. Pp416. $11.95 (paper).

When Melvin Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine's biography of John L. Lewis first appeared in 1977, it was acclaimed as "a monumental biography," a book which "fills a gaping hole in labor history, a work which was "must reading for anyone concerned with the history of the American labor movement." Lewis's place in that movement insured the book's significance, as several reviewers pointed out. The eloquent and contentious leader of the United Mine Workers (UMW) and the driving force behind the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) was celebrated as "one of the major players in the turbulent drama of 20th-century U.S. history," "the most powerful man in American labor [in the years before World War II] and arguably the second most important man in the country, after President Roosevelt," and "a towering enigma, an enormously complex and contradictory figure." Criticisms of the book focused on its tendencies toward pedantry and excessive length: "There is tedium in the text and documentation (71 pages of footnotes)," said one reviewer; "In their zeal to make this a definitive biography, they have perhaps set down more than most people will want to read about Lewis's unending conflicts with big business, big labor and FDR," said another, who also remarked that the "prose is plodding."

That first edition ran to 619 pages and was dense with dates, names and figures, an intimidating work to lay readers who might want an introduction to Lewis's fascinating career. That many may have avoided the original is unfortunate, of course, because the claims about Lewis's importance are accurate, and the judgments about his enigmatic character are true. But now, thanks to the University of Illinois Press, readers who want to know more about Lewis and his crucial role in the American labor movement have a readier resource available. With the encouragement of the press, Dubofsky (a professor of history at the State University of New York at Binghampton) and Van Tine (a professor of history at Ohio State University) have produced an abridged edition of the biography, reducing it to 416 pages and eliminating the distracting footnotes and other scholarly apparatus. The result is a readable volume, but a fascinating biography made more accessible to a larger number of readers. Graduate students and scholars can still grapple with the original, but general readers can now more easily "sift... for the romance of the greatest force American labor has ever known," as one earlier reviewer put it.

While Dubofsky and Van Tine document the achievements — dubious and otherwise — which made Lewis so compelling a figure in American history, they also explore the paradoxes and contradictions which are, perhaps, the true measure of Lewis's character and beliefs. He worshipped the myth of the self-made man, for example, while dispensing favors to relatives and friends whose only credentials were their loyalty to him. (The murderous W.A. "Tony" Boyle was part of his legacy.) He formed alliances with figures as disparate as Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt. He spoke for the toiling masses while courting big business and forging a personal friendship with Cyrus Eaton, the Cleveland industrialist. He cherished the values of home and hearth, yet left his family for weeks and months traveling on union business. He was a worker for the common man, but capable of self-indulgence on the grandest scale.

Dubofsky and Van Tine quote Lewis Adamic, whose 1937 portrait of Lewis in Forum articulated the "possessive individualism" which manifested itself in Lewis's ostentatious life style:

"Though an exceptional man, Lewis is also a deeply ordinary one . . . he has a chauffeur in whipcords to drive him about in the twelve-cylinder automobile his union bought for him; which is what every ordinary American would like to have. . . [T]here ride in that shiny car . . . vicariously — the four hundred thousand United Mine Workers of America, most of them ordinary men . . . full of the instinct and impulse to improve themselves, to get on, to acquire the material symbols of well-being, power, and progress that are the chief contemporary elements of the American 'Dream.' That fine machine and the snappy cap on the chauffeur's head are ordinary symbols, generally craved in America, though rarely attained, and which, incidentally are apt to be an important source of Lewis's power in this country."

Perhaps it was Lewis's grasp of those innate longings, his intuitive sense that he had become a symbol to his men of what one — or they — could achieve that explained his hold on their loyalties, despite the contradictions of his life. "You know," Lewis once said, "after all there are two great material tasks in life that affect the individual and affect great bodies of men. The first is to achieve or acquire something of value or something that is desirable, and the second task is to prevent some scoundrel from taking it away from you." That bald simplicity characterized Lewis's leadership. "One can search the extant files of the UMW and CIO in vain for any policy statements, administrative reports, or detailed proposals of union objectives bearing Lewis's signature," according to Dubofsky and Van Tine,". . . because Lewis operated more in the style of big-city political boss than modern business executive. He dealt in power, not policy; patronage, not principles."

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The abridged biography, like the original, follows Lewis's remarkable career from his birth in Lucas, Iowa, in 1880 to his death on June 11, 1969, in Doctors Hospital in Washington, D.C. Some of the early years are shrouded in mystery, including a five-year period when Lewis, by his own account, was a miner in the Rocky Mountain West until he returned to his family in Iowa in 1905. In perhaps the most signficant move of those early years, Lewis and his new wife Myrta moved to Panama, Ill., about 40 miles south of Springfield, where in 1908 Lewis took a job in a newly opened mine. They were soon followed by Lewis's parents and his five brothers and two sisters. Since they spoke English (Lewis's parents had come to lowa from Wales in the 1870s) and most of the other miners were from non-English -speaking countries, the Lewises were able to rise quickly in union ranks, and this possibly calculated move to a place where they could assume authority set the stage for all of John's subsequent fame and success. By the time the family moved to its spacious house on Lawrence Avenue in Springfield in 1917, John L. Lewis was already a significant figure, commuting frequently to UMW headquarters in Indianapolis and traveling more widely to muster support for the union and to do battle with its enemies.

Dubofsky and Van Tine have done valuable work in retrieving materials from UMW files and gathering reminiscences from Lewis's colleagues, friends and foes. Their meticulous research allows the facts of Lewis's life to speak eloquently for themselves — of his manipulations of politicians and businessmen; of his monumental ego and his occasional deceit; of his inspired oratory and his mundane practicality: of his basic shrewdness and his occasional lapses of judgment about finances; of his hunger for fame and his distrust of history's judgments. "Himself devious." Dubofsky and Van Tine assert, "he believed that all historical actors maneuvered in secret and conspiratorial ways that historians could never penetrate." This new edition of this important biography provides compelling evidence that Lewis, at least, had no compunctions about maneuvering "in secret and conspiratorial ways." Given the mysteries and controversies which surround this giant figure, Dubofsky and Van Tine deserve our thanks for "penetrating" closer to the bed-rock of the legend of John L. Lewis. And the University of Illinois Press deserves tlatdit for making the legend more accessible.

33/January 1987/Illinois Issues