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John Williams Swackhamer was born on March 23, 1919, in Easton, Pennsylvania. He earned his B.A. at Lafayette College in 1946, his M.A. at the State University of Iowa in 1947, attended the University of Zurich in 1947-1948, and earned his Ph.D. from the State University of Iowa in 1949. He became an Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at Montana State University (now The University of Montana-Missoula) in 1949. He published papers on American labor unions, and conducted an extensive study of the International Union of Mill, Mine and Smelter Workers (I.U.M.M.S.W., or Mine-Mill) and their dispute with the United Steel Workers of America in the early 1950s. In that conflict, The C.I.O. (Congress of Industrial Organizations) expelled the I.U.M.M.S.W. in 1950 for communistic policies. The Steel Workers exploited this through the press and radio as a means of increasing their membership. Both unions used propaganda to sway opinion. The result was a petition to the National Labor Relations Board to set up a special election to determine which union would represent these workers. The election took place in February of 1954 and Mine-Mill won the election as the representative union.

Swackhamer died in 1955.