A Year of Change.

Events in 1952 had profound effects on the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), the country's two large federations of labor unions, which together represented 14.5 million of American workers. The election of President Eisenhower in November of that year brought an end to twenty years of Democratic, prolabor control of the national government. Within a month labor also experienced a change in leadership when the longtime leaders of both the AFL and the CIO died. The AFL's secretary-treasurer, George Meany, became its president, and United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther was elected head of the CIO.

An End to Rivalry.

Meany and Reuther almost immediately began discussions on merging the two federations. Doing so would mean overcoming the long-standing and sometimes bitter rivalry between industrial unions (CIO) and craft unions (AFL), which had prompted eleven...