The ten most important events in American industrialhistory

Tom Lehman TLehman at lor.net
Tue Mar 14 15:31:32 PST 2000


Hinrich--I'm not trying to demean the intensity of the moment or the gravity of the situation; poetic license and publicity have their places in the history of American labor.

I'm sure that Dr.Yates is portraying the intensity and gravity of the situation; it was a defining moment in a public break with the old order of the AFL.

Tom Lehman

Hinrich Kuhls wrote:


> At 15:32 14.03.00 -0500, you wrote:
>
> >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



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