In his 1948 book, The New Men of Power, the sociologist C. Wright Mills described trade union leaders as “strategic actors” at the helm of “the only organizations capable of stopping the main drift toward war and slump.” From Edwin Abbott a Baltimore steelworker to Joseph Zych the recording secretary of a union local in East Chicago, Indiana, the 1946 directory Who's Who in Labor provides a granular view of the men and women Mills considered key to the future of democracy in postwar America.

Map based on the 1947 directory, Who's Who in Labor.

Red = CIO Affiliations
Blue = AFL Affiliations