Political Struggles in the CIO

in the autumn of 1935 President John L. Lewis of the Mine Workers, recognizing that the political climate had created a unique opportunity for the unionization of the mass-production industries—and despairing of persuading the AFL craft unions to relinquish their jurisdictional claims over the skilled workers in those industries—called together the committee of union leaders that became the CIO.

In Moscow at that time—the years after Hitler’s seizure of power in Germany and...