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You see, his blind spot was that he couldn't conceive that the leader of a labor union might have other than political motives - political for himself - and that he also had motives that had to do with the welfare of his union as a union, and with the actual individual welfare of the members of the union, the improvement of their economic status. He really believed that you could trade with them as you traded with a district leader - for votes. He couldn't believe that it was otherwise, but of course it was. And John L. Lewis is a peculiar example of that. I don't think he has ever betrayed his own people. He will betray one half of them if he thinks they're working against what he believes to be the welfare of the union. He's pigheaded and he believes in his own judgment as superior to all other men's with regard to the union. That's true. But he would never make a deal for his personal advantage, and Byrnes couldn't believe that. He had believed that all unions worked that way. He had had no experience with unions. He just deduced it from his experience with other elements of the human race with whom he had more experience.

However, at the time of the 1940 election Byrnes was on the Supreme Court. He had been working for the President and the President had appointed him to the court.