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THE CHALLENGE TO THE ENTRENCHED LEADERSHIP of the large and powerful United Steelworkers of America (USWA) originated in the union's District 31 during the 1970s. District 31, which surpassed the Pittsburgh area in membership after World War II, included such key manufacturing cities as Chicago, Joliet, and Chicago Heights in northeastern Illinois and Gary and East Chicago in northwestern Indiana. Less a broad-based movement than a spontaneous crusade led by a charismatic reformer, the revolt within the union began with the challenge to authority issued by one defiant steelworker—Edward E. “Eddie” Sadlowski Jr. Initially relying largely on sustenance provided by family and friends, Sadlowski won the presidency of Local 65 in Southeast Chicago in 1963 and the directorship of District 31 in 1974. He became North America's foremost spokesman for progressive unionism and a leading figure in the nation's liberal politics. His attempt to capture the presidency of the international union three years later fell short, an important example of how progressive workers failed in their attempts to wrest control of hidebound unions away from their timid leaders. Sadlowski's loss to the establishment candidate in 1977, covered extensively by national media, marked an important road not taken by the USWA and a decisive turn away from social democracy by organized labor in the United States. 1
Born and raised in the heart of Southeast Chicago's steelmaking district, Sadlowski absorbed working-class culture from an early age. After a brief stint in the army, he went to work at the age of eighteen as a machinist apprentice at US Steel's mammoth South Works, where the Calumet River flows into Lake Michigan. Like his grandfather and father before him, both of whom toiled in area steel mills, he lived his entire life alongside the shot-and-a-beer taverns, chophouses, and cut-rate clothing stores that flanked the South Works. From the bedroom of his boyhood home, he could see the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) headquarters across the street. His nickname, “Oil Can Eddie,” owed to his early years on the job when he carried an oil can when making rounds as a troubleshooter fixing machinery on the shop floor. When the work pace slowed in the mill, Sadlowski later remembered, he hid in the toilet or an outdoor shanty to...