It is no surprise that John Llewellyn Lewis (1880-1969) dedicated his life to the labor struggles of coal miners. His father, a coal miner, was blacklisted by the coal operators of Iowa for belonging to a union. John L. Lewis began mining at the age of fourteen. His career began when he was elected to his united mine workers (UMW) local in Panama, Illinois in 1919. His union then joined the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Lewis supported industrial rather than craft unionism, which caused him to split from the AFL in 1936 and launch the Congress of Industrial organizations (CIO). The CIO was successful almost immediately, winning contracts for the United Auto Workers and for the Steel Workers Organizing Committee in 1937. In 1940, Lewis left the CIO to devote his energy to UMW, and in 1949 won an industry-wide health and pension program for miners, which set the standard for thousands of similar programs for American workers.