The 1930's was a period of great economic hardship for the American people, a period of upheaval in the social and political structure. Streets were filled with hungry people waiting in breadlines. During the Great Depression, workers also walked the picket lines demanding their rights under laws passed during the New Deal.

The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), passed in 1933, contained a section guaranteeing to workers a right to organize for the purpose of collective bargaining. Several large and sometimes violent strikes occurred in 1934 involving unions struggling for recognition as collective bargaining agent under the NIRA. Toledo, Minneapolis, and San Francisco were scenes of three of the best known strikes.

The level of strike activity was the highest in American history. Between May, 1933 and July, 1937, 10,000 strikes took place involving some 5,600,000 workers. It was a period of bitter conflict between Capital and Labor.

In May 1935, the NIRA was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. Its labor provisions, however, were replaced on July 5, 1935 by the National Labor Relations Act, popularly referred to as the Wagner Act.

This act set up elaborate machinery for the determination of collective bargaining agencies and for the protection of labor from unfair practices by employers who might attempt to hinder union organization. By its protection of workers who chose to organize, it went much further than any previous law to encourage a policy of collective bargaining. The steelworkers were among the first to begin organizing under this new law.

The steelworkers received the stimulus for organization from the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), a group of unions which defied the craft orientation of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in November, 1935. The leader of the CIO was the United Mine Workers' president, John L. Lewis. Lewis believed that the mass production industries should be organized on an industrial, rather than a craft basis.

Under the AFL, union workers in the steel industry would be required to join their respective craft organizations, and these different unions would then negotiate separately with management. Under the CIO plan, all steelworkers would join one union only, and bargain as a united group. The craft approach had failed previously in the steel industry, and the workers were anxious to organize under the CIO with its industry-wide approach.