The ten most important events in American industrialhistory

[Hinrich Kuhls]

Tom, the reason why I picked up the "punch" was not to validate its
'anecdotal content', but just  to point to the fact that in a 12 minute's
film on American industrial history a "punch" in the 1930ies and a
healf-hearted hand-shake in the 1950ies would effectively illustrate two
highlights in that history as far as the American trade union movement is
conerned. However, I have to admit that my knowledge of American industrial
history is rather restricted, not to mention cinematic art.

Hinrich Kuhls.

At 18:31 14.03.00 -0500, you wrote:
>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
>
>