John L. Lewis Quotes
There is nothing to stop him from making coal mines safe except his lack of desire to do so …. J. A. Krug permitted these men to die by his inaction.
Interior Secretary J. A. Krug
John L. Lewis, 1882-1947, President, United Mine Workers of America, Congressional Testimony, March 1947
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
As hard as it is to understand today, there were few states with safety laws governing industry. There was no OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration ) or other federal regulation of industrial safety conditions.
At the time there was very little such legislation or regulation, and the little there was only occurred after massive lobbying efforts by organized labor. In modern times, often it takes a horrible tragedy to occur before the political will can be mobilized to cope with issues of occupational health and safety.
Most mine safety initiatives have only been passed or implemented after a major mine disaster. This type of inertia, in most fields, is unfortunately typical of legislative calendars and agendas where only a few items are high priority at any one time.
He was the only public official to so apologize.
Referring to the potential effect of legislation requiring environmental disclosure:
Elements of the Army lied to the family of the dead soldier and the media, and then tried to cover up the lies. Abazaid is one of the few government high officials who was candid about his agency’s failure.
John Llewellyn Lewis was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) from 1920 to 1960. 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. 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).
