John L Lewis Speech (partial)

 

 

 

From: Oxsan
Date: 22 Sep 2001
Time: 19:28:14

John L. Lewis, the bushy eye-browed, white haired President of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) and the most powerful union leader of his time was a great and powerful speaker. His voice was very much like Churchill's - low pitched and a little husky with a strong sibilance. On Sept 3, 1937 when he was 57 years old he gave a nationwide radio address to reply to charges that the CIO was infiltrated by Communists. In addition to that he put a political plug at the end of the speech to scare FDR a bit. Labor had voted solid democrat in recent elections but John L. wanted FDR to be a bit worried about it staying in the fold in this critical election year. So he said:

Labor next year cannot avoid the necessity of a political assay of the works and deeds of its so-called friends and its political beneficiaries. It must determine who are its friends in the area of politics as elsewhere. It feels that its cause is just, and that its friends should not view its struggle with neutral detachment or intone constant criticism of its activities.

Those who chant their praises of democracy, but lose no chance to drive their knives into labor's defenseless back, must feel the weight of labor's woe, even as its open adversaries must feel the thrust of labor's power.

Labor, like Israel, has many sorrows. Its women weep for their fallen and they lament for the future of the children of the race. It ill behooves one who has supped at labor's table and who has sheltered in labor's house to curse with equal fervor and fine impartiality both labor and its adversaries when they become locked in deadly embrace.

I repeat that labor seeks peace and guarantees its own loyalty, but the voice of labor, insistent upon its rights, should not be annoying to the ears of justice nor offensive to the conscience of the American people.

I can still hear John L. Lewis making that speech. It sent shivers up my back then and it still does just to read it. He was a great orator. He started out as a coal miner in West Virginia and I doubt (but don't know) if he had a college education. Anyway it is a little treasure of my memories.