Upon warning the convention that the rubber union would never again accept such an arrangement, Hutcheson shot to his feet to raise a point of order. He argued that the industrial union question had already been disposed of when the convention defeated the policy earlier. Lewis countered that Hutcheson’s point of order was “small potatoes” and was meant to silence smaller unions. The burly Hutcheson, standing at 6 foot 3, replied that he had been raised “on small potatoes and that is why I am so small.” After AFL President William Green ruled in Hutcheson favor, Lewis marched across the floor and, following a brief animated conversation, clocked Hutcheson with a right to the jaw, sending him crashing to the floor amid the wreckage of a table.
According to the NY Times, shortly after that, Lewis received a telegram from a union carpenter from Kansas City: “Congratulations, sock him again.”
Shortly after, Lewis co-found the Committee for Industrial Organization within the AFL, which changed its name to the Congress of Industrial Organizations when it broke away from the AF of L in 1938. Its founding unions included leaders of the United Mine Workers, International Typographical Union, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, International Ladies Garment Workers, United Textile Workers, the Oil Workers Union and the Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers and the Mine, Mill and Smelters Union. At the 1938 CIO convention, Lewis was elected as the upstart labor federation’s first president.
