Reclaiming FDR’s legacy

Well known as a whipping-boy of the Right, where is the fervent defense of FDR on the left?

Roosevelt played an amazingly catalytic role in the politics of labor unions. Many union organizers signed up membership easily by portraying themselves as “agents of Roosevelt” rather than having to dwell in detail on the merits of unions as an economic or political force.

In 1936, John L. Lewis changed union politics irrevocably when he put the entire United Mine Workers’ resources behind Roosevelt’s re-election. His monetary contributions to FDR’s campaign alone set a new record for union political contributions, not to mention the organizing resources he lent to the campaign.

Lewis backed Roosevelt, and Roosevelt, in turn, backed Lewis. The first test was the fledgling UAW’s Flint, Michigan sit-down strike. In addition to Roosevelt’s landslide, the Democratic surge also brought Frank Murphy in as governor, which played a key role in the Flint strike.

(Lewis played little role in planning the strike in Flint – he was first of all interested in the steel campaign and the SWOC, while the UAW had autonomous leaders who planned the move against GM – but his one clear piece of advice was to by all means hold the strike until Jan 1st when the new governor comes into office. The UAW almost made it, but that’s another story. Once the strike was underway, however, Lewis backed it fully and was key in negotiating the settlement.)

The Lewis-Roosevelt alliance would sour, particularly when Roosevelt pulled back relief spending in late ’37, thinking the Depression was over, and then failed to back the SWOC in Little Steel, after company goons and thug cops gunned down 10 unarmed strikers. Roosevelt’s response: “A plague on both your houses.” For Lewis, this represented the turn back to the governmental norm, where private property rights always trumped the working-man’s right of association.