John L. Lewis (1880 – 1969) was the highly combative UMW president who thoroughly controlled the union from 1920 to 1960. A major player in the labor movement and national politics, in the 1930s he used UMW activists to organize new unions in autos, steel and rubber. He was the driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). It established the United Steel Workers of America and helped organize millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s.