"The organization and constant onward sweep of this movement exemplifies the resentment of the many toward the selfishness, greed and the neglect of the few"
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“Constant onward sweep” is labor rhetoric as weather system: unstoppable, impersonal, and morally clarifying. John L. Lewis isn’t describing a policy dispute; he’s staging a verdict. The movement (read: mass union organizing in the industrial United States) is cast as organized discipline married to historical momentum, a force that doesn’t merely complain but advances. That pairing matters. “Organization” reassures skeptics that this is not a mob. “Sweep” warns employers and politicians that the old arrangements can’t simply be managed with a few concessions and a photo op.
The intent is to translate workplace conflict into a larger democratic drama: the many versus the few. Lewis frames resentment not as a shameful emotion but as an earned political fuel, produced by “selfishness, greed and neglect.” Those nouns are chosen like indictments. Greed names extraction; neglect names indifference. Together they argue that labor unrest isn’t irrational agitation but a rational response to sustained disregard.
Subtextually, Lewis is also pre-empting the favorite critique of unions as special interests. By insisting the few have already been acting as a ruthless minority, he flips the charge: collective bargaining becomes the corrective to concentrated power, not a distortion of it. In the mid-20th-century context of coal and steel wars, New Deal reform, and fierce anti-union backlash, this language functions as both mobilization and legitimacy. It gives workers a story in which their anger is not merely personal but structural, and their solidarity is the mechanism that turns grievance into leverage.
The intent is to translate workplace conflict into a larger democratic drama: the many versus the few. Lewis frames resentment not as a shameful emotion but as an earned political fuel, produced by “selfishness, greed and neglect.” Those nouns are chosen like indictments. Greed names extraction; neglect names indifference. Together they argue that labor unrest isn’t irrational agitation but a rational response to sustained disregard.
Subtextually, Lewis is also pre-empting the favorite critique of unions as special interests. By insisting the few have already been acting as a ruthless minority, he flips the charge: collective bargaining becomes the corrective to concentrated power, not a distortion of it. In the mid-20th-century context of coal and steel wars, New Deal reform, and fierce anti-union backlash, this language functions as both mobilization and legitimacy. It gives workers a story in which their anger is not merely personal but structural, and their solidarity is the mechanism that turns grievance into leverage.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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