>Sorry Max. Your thinking about the time Lewis allegedly punched the
President
>of the carpenters union in the nose at an AFL convention in the early 30's
>before the founding of the CIO. And from what I've been told that was pretty
>much newspaper hype. They might of bumped belly's or something on that
order of
>conflict. But, the punch in the nose story sounded better back in the
>coalfields.
Lewis really did punch Hutcheson:
"In 1935 the American Federation of Labor held its annual convention in Atlantic City. It was a tumultuous meeting. Workers throughout the nation's mass production industries were in a state of revolt against the devastation wrought by the Great Depression. Within the AFL there was a sharp split between the craft unionists like Bill Hutcheson, who found the organization of unskilled industrial workers repugnant, and the radicals like John L. Lewis, who understood that only massive industrial unionization would save the labor movement from extinction. During acrimonious debate, Lewis threw his famous punch into Hutcheson's face, and the split soon became a secession, marked by the birth of the CIO. The rest, as they say, is history."
Michael Yates in the first paragraph of his article "Does the Labor Movement have a future?" (Monthly Review, February 1997).
HK