Lewis traveled throughout Pennsylvania and the Midwest as an organizer and trouble-shooter, especially in coal and steel districts. In 1911 Samuel Gompers, the head of the AFL, hired Lewis as a full-time union organizer. He moved to Panama, Illinois, where in 1909 he was elected president of the UMW local. Both were failures and Lewis returned to coal mining.
In 1907, he ran for mayor of Lucas and launched a feed-and-grain distributorship. In 1906, Lewis was elected a delegate to the United Mine Workers (UMW) national convention. Lewis attended three years of high school in Des Moines and at the age of 17 went to work in the Big Hill Mine at Lucas. While his maternal grandfather was an RLDS pastor and Lewis periodically donated to his local RLDS church for the rest of his life, there is no definite evidence that he formally joined the Midwestern Mormon denomination. His mother and grandparents were members of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS), and the boy was raised in the church's views regarding alcohol and sexual propriety, as well as a just social order that favored the poor. Cleveland was a company town, built around a coal mine developed one mile east of the town of Lucas. Lewis and Ann (Watkins) Lewis, immigrants from Llangurig, Wales. Lewis was born in or near Cleveland, Lucas County, Iowa (distinct from the present township of Cleveland in Davis County), to Thomas H. 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. Coal miners for 40 years hailed him as their leader, whom they credited with bringing high wages, pensions and medical benefits. 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. 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. 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.
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. He was an isolationist, and broke with Roosevelt in 1940 on FDR's anti-Nazi foreign policy. Roosevelt win a landslide victory for the US Presidency in 1936. Lewis was a Republican, but he played a major role in helping Democrat Franklin D. After resigning as head of the CIO in 1941, Lewis took the United Mine Workers out of the CIO in 1942 and in 1944 took the union into the American Federation of Labor (AFL). A major player in the history of coal mining, he was the driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which established the United Steel Workers of America and helped organize millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. John Llewellyn Lewis (Febru– June 11, 1969) was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) from 1920 to 1960.
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