FDR, New Deals, and the Limits of Power 207larger movement—an attempt to organized unskilled workers in mass indus-
tries like coal, autos, and steel. The AFL and Lewis had very different
approaches to unionism—with the AFL seeking to maintain good wages for
skilled workers while Lewis wanted to organize millions of workers in mines
and factories all over America. Finally, the split became so great that Lewis
and other “militants” formed a new union, the Congress of Industrial
Organizations [CIO] in November 1935. FDR, already dealing with corpora-
tions, now had the AFL nipping at him, so in the coming elections he would
count on liberal New Dealers and the CIO to get Democratic votes in 1936.
It was the most “left” FDR would ever go.
This marked the high point of Roosevelt’s and the New Deal’s support of
labor. Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin even chaired a committee to
investigate corporate use of agents like the Pinkertons and Baldwin-Felts,
strikebreakers, and industrial violence by employers. With such apparent sup-
port, the UMW alone spent $600,000 on the Democrats in the election, an
immense amount at that time. FDR won the election overwhelmingly and
labor union memberships rose by 3 million after the 1936 elections. Over 23
percent of non-agricultural workers were now unionized, the highest ever to
that point. The 1936 elections had brought several pro-labor, pro-New Deal
representatives into government, which gave unions more power than ever
before [and probably more than they have had since]. So labor success, as in
the Flint Strike [see next section] resulted because Democrats at the national
and state levels did not give in to corporate demands, as they usually did. The
law, and even a Supreme Court decision upholding the Wagner Act and
NLRB in April 1937, were not as important as the political power labor
enjoyed in 1936 and early 1937. Labor had a brief window of opportunity
and favorable political circumstances, and that accounted for its success.
Labor’s honeymoon was short, though. In 1937, after re-election, FDR
backed away from his pro-labor position. He suggested adding justices to the
Supreme Court [which had overturned many New Deal programs] and thus
alienated a huge segment of Americans who believed the courts should not
be a political institution [though they always were]. Even worse for labor, he
moved away from economic policies that were finally fixing the economy and
that led to the “Roosevelt Recession,” as already noted. Politically, both
Republican and Democratic Congressmen, especially southerners, began to
turn on labor, especially the Flint sit-in strikers. By early 1937, anti-labor