Southern Textile Unions
The textile industry was, at one time, one of the largest
industries in the south. Starting in the late 1800’s with small local looms, and
spreading to become corporations who controlled the south and whose influence
stretched internationally. One of the first textile industries came to Gaston
County North Carolina, and its huge success led to the opening of mills across
the Carolina’s and Virginia. As these industries grew they began to control more
and more of its employees lives. These huge corporations were permitted to take
advantage of individuals because of their inability to fight back. The
employees of these mills lived in conditions resembling that of slaves before
the civil war. They were worked grueling hours in inhospitable prisons called
textile plants, yet were paid on average less than any other industrial worker
in America. In the early twentieth century a sentiment of contempt began to grow
between the laboring class and the all-powerful corporation. The masses began to
push for union representation.
The importance of this industry is
represented by the industries numbers. Textiles was the foundation of southern
economy. In 1900 there were one hundred seventy-seven mills in North Carolina,
but by the early nineteen twenties, that number had grown to over five hundred,
with fifty in Gaston County alone. Textiles was a booming industry in the south.
South Carolina employed only 2,053 people in the industry at the turn of the
century, but by 1920 nearly 50,000 people worked in mills, one sixth of South
Carolina’s population. Virginia’s textile industry grew just as quickly with the
incorporation of the Riverside Cotton Mills which had only 2,240 spindles and a
mere one hundred looms. By the turn of the century the mill expanded and
operated 67,650 spindles and 200,000 looms. Growth seemed to continue almost
exponentially until the depression set in in 1929.
It could easily be said
that the depression was the cause of the ill will that the workers felt toward
their employers. Although the mills seemed to be doing great, grossing sales in
the billions of dollars, the working class in the mills were seeing very little
of the industries success. Textile workers earned less than any other laborer,
and in North Carolina average wages were the least. With the success as abundant
as it was in the textile industry, it is no wonder that the laborers sought
unionization since they were seeing so little of the profit at their end of the
industry. In 1902 only one textile workers union had been created in Virginia
was reported by the state Labor Commissioner. It had forty members, of whom none
were employed (Smith 52). So, massive strikes were impossible to organize and
because of this the workers had little leverage. There were still small local
strikes that were mostly unsuccessful. One of which was reported in Mill on the
Dan. When Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor visited
Danville, Virginia where in response to their attempts to organize hoped to
catalyze the endeavors. A single mill went on strike in a city that was
supported by five others. The company did not compromise, and slowly the workers
trickled back to their jobs. In 1929 the first notable strike broke out in
Gaston County. This massive strike was preceded by a brief strike in nearby
Mecklinburg County, and other smaller labor disputes in counties surrounding
Gaston, but this strike, called the Loray Mill Strike, began the massive spread
of unionization sentiment in the south. The year of 1929 marked the boom of the
spread of unionization in the south, agitated by the success of the Loray Mill
strike.
South Carolina’s, as well as Virginia’s industry executives were
fearing the spread of this push for ionization would spread across North
Carolina’s borders and into their states. Their fears were not unwarranted. The
last major labor battle in textile south was in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina
between pro-union laborers and the J. P. Stevens Company where workers joined
the TWUA (Textile Workers Union of America) and soon merged with the Amalgamated
Clothing Workers Union of America to form ACTWU (the Alma gated Clothing and
Textile Workers Union of America) creating a union giant with over 400,000
members. Soon afterward nearly all of the south's textile corporations were
unionized. From 1929 when the TWUA was first formed to 1976 when the ACWU and
the TWUA merged, over 140,000 textile workers had joined the union. Why did the
union gain support so rapidly? Their were several factors which led to the
expedience of expansion.
First of all, leadership was a major issue in the
growth of the union. “A new whisper rose in Gaston county and throughout the
South, the voice of labor leadership asking concessions from the employees” (Cope
and Wellman 163). Labor leadership had arose, but because of the terrible
conditions workers had to endure it wasn’t very difficult for the leaders to
carry the masses into the unavoidable labor battle. History has proven that any
oppressed people can by persuaded to rise up with the aide of proficient
leadership. Hitler’s rise to power is but one example among many. The civil
rights movement is another headed by Martin Luther King Jr. and Booker T.
Washington. The rise of the working class in Russia under the leadership of
Lenin and Stalin is still another. The textile workers in the south are no
exception. They were oppressed by the overpowering executive giants who
controlled their lives. As the industry had grown, mill towns sprang up. These
villages were built by the mills, and housed its laborers. At first these towns
seemed to create a healthy symbiotic relationship between the employees and their
employers, but these mill towns weren’t the free housing and free living
utopia’s they were marketed as. These people of these towns began to resemble
the plantation houses and surrounding slave houses during the period of slavery
in American history. Much like the slaves the textile workers worked in trade
for housing and food. The mills offered a paycheck, but they also offered a line
of credit at a mill owned store which was then deducted from the individuals
paycheck. Rent was also deducted. There were cases when workers came home with
only a few cents left on their checks after deductions were made. This
relationship does not seem beneficial to the worker, but it worked under the
close bonds of local ownership. One small time mill owner, when strikes began to
pop up, noted that, “Last winter, when the snow was on the ground and times were
hard, we took care of our employees, and they appreciate it; they’re not going
back on us at this time” (Cope and Wellman 164). However, as more and more mills
became incorporated and workers lost touch with their employers, these serine
conditions in the mill towns changed to conflict. One conversation in Rise Going
to
Rise is a testament to the new conditions.
“We’ve been working all our lives
in the cotton mill, and you [the speaker’s wife] can’t take no moe. I just wish
they’d get somebody up in there that’s got enough sense to run the mill without
trying to push the help to death…I’m gonna retire” (28).
The wife’s
response to this statement was simply, “He says he’s gonna quit, but he ain’t.
It’s his life” (28). The industry heads intended to keep these people in this
slave like position. They paid them little so that they couldn’t save up money
to leave and even used threats to deep workers in the mills. One worker said,
“It was a stinking job. I got paid minimum wage. Two dollars and
something…My supervisor told me, ‘you’d better do a good job and you’d better
not quit because you won’t get another job anywhere if you do.’”
She
asked him why, and the only response he could think of was “Because we need a
spinner” (Conway 92). One employee possible characterized the mill best when he
called ti a “sweatshop, slave prison” (Hall 187)
The villiages were in as
bad a shape as the the treatment of the workers. In Like a Family the author
found a study of the cotton mill villiages conducted by the government. The
report was not commendable.
“Piedmont farmers who moved to the mill village
found much of what they had come for – regular pay, easier work, and familiar
surroundings- yet at a cost they could not have foreseen. At first, it was
heaven to them to work in the mills and draw a payday, however small. But
drawing a payday did not always lead to a better life, partly because of the
condition in the factory villages. The smaller villages and those in the country
are often primitive in the extreme…Larger villages, particularly those located
in urban areas and owned by sizable corporations, boasted of grated roads…But
these communities were the exceptions not the rule…Villages are dirty and
streets unkept, and the very sight of the village is a horror.”
Workers
lived in these conditions and worked in prisons. They worked in factories that
had no windows and were surrounded by barb-wire fences. The executives had been
able to push the work day to an average of twelve hours, while the law
prohibited an individual to work over ten. The executives found loopholes in the
labor laws, and by doing so employed children, working them up to even fifteen
hours a day. Knowing all this, the motivation of the workers is obvious: they
wanted change, and a better life. This motivation was but one of the reasons the
TWUA spread so quickly. However, motivation alone was not enough to create
change. Without a union to back them, the workers could do little about this
outright oppression. These horrible conditions were but one of the reasons that
the spread of the TWUA was such a rapid growth. In conditions like this people
are willing to do anything. They are much more motivated to create change and at
every oppurtunity they took advantage of anything they could to benefit
themselves and to decrease the powers of the textile giants who controlled their
lives. All they actually needed was for the oppurtunities to present themselves.
The TWUA had much help, but until they found their leaders who organized the
masses of willing people, their mere desires and hopes were useless. This
leadership came in many forms and from many different people. Each single battle
or strike seemed to have its own organizers. Without these organizers nothing
would have happened. It seemed that the people were reluctant to join unions for
fears of fulfilled threats. However, organizers persisted. For various reasons,
from political asperations to simple human kindness, leaders steped up and
exited workers into unionization. The executives at a Virginia mill noted that,
“The union has held quite a number of meetings, to some extent coercive measures
[have been] adopted, in order to get the operatives into the union” (Smith 51),
and even President Fitzgerald himself noted that, “It is true that in many
instances the nefarious influence of the prefessional agitator has found fertile
soil in the American workman’s brain…” (Smith 264). These proffesional agitators
as Fitzgerald caled them were the men who stepped up to protect the workers
rights. However, Fitzgerald does seem to give these men a negative connotation
but this was more than likely because of the fact that he was an executive at
the Fitzgerald and Ray Co. (Smith 265). Robert Walsh was one of these “political
agitators.” As a member of the National Workers Labor Board (NWLB), pushed the
workers to “organize your unions, strong and liberal, fearless and far-seeking,”
and to push “until there will remain not one wage earner in the country deprive
of full voice in determining the cinditions of his job…” (Hall 186). Walsh could
have possibly started single-handedly the influx of workers into unions. The
event that marked the turning point of the battle betwwen the companies and the
small unions began in columbus, Georgia. A mill in that area fired employees who
recently joined a local branch of the TWUA, and as a result a strike incurred.
Walsh prompted the NWLB to intervene on the workers behalf. The NWLB set up laws
pertaining to that particular mill which forced the company to abolish contracts
prohibiting its employees to join unions. Although these laws only pertained to
that individual mill, the success achieved spread new hope in union throughout
the south. After the WWI, when American men who had given up their jobvs to
their wives during war time, came home expecting better conditions. Along with
these expectations came a new mentality to fight for them. The TWUA which was
founded in 1901 in the northern New England mills gained 70, 000 members in the
years following the war (Hall 186). With the unions new found strength a seris
of strikes traversed the south between 1919 and 1921, flowing like a wave and
changing the face of employer-employee relatiuonships. The wave began on the
outskirts of textile mill concentrations. In columbus, South Carolina the union
striked in selected mills. They’re demands were recognition and a fourty-eight
hour work week. The TWUA now centered on North Carolina. One hundred and fifty
workers walked out after their weekly pay was cut in half when the war-time
bonus was dropped. They called for union support and the next day the TWUA
banner was behind them as Highlands #1 plant striked as well. Rather than
negotiate the company closed both plants. The Governoer of North Carolina,
Thomas bicket also played a part in the spread of unionization. Bicket outlawed
discrimination in hiring on the bases of “organazation affiliation.” The Union
also reached a compromise. The plants were reopened to a work week less five
hours, yet an unchanged pay rate. This union success only instogated union
growth even further. Within a few weeks these standards spread to mills in
Belmont Concord and Connapolis (Hall 189). Southern textile workers had finally
begun to see what the union represented and as laws were created to prohibite
discrimination because of union affiliation, it was easier and less risky for
employees to sign the union card. By the end of 1919 the TWUA had recognized
45,000 members in the Crolina’s alone (Hall 194-196).
The union fight fell
off during the depression as mill owners simply could not afford to meet
strikers demands, and when strikes did occur plants simply shut down and owners
were happy not to have to run all winter long at a loss. However, by 1927 the
union flame reignited. In henderson, North Carolina a walkout began the
resurgence of the TWUA. Although the strike failed with threats of evictions, it
did gain the TWUA eight hundered members.
The hardest of the unions battles
were yet to be fought. In 1929 violent strikes broke out. Unsatisfied employees
were fighting against the “strech-out” policy of the mills. This policy layed
off individuals and forced larger work loads on the remaining workers. First,
Elizabethton, Tenesse walked out. After the Sherriff, J. M. Moreland, a major
unionest backer was forced out of office and a local businessman who supported
the TWUA was forced into submission by “tricky lawmakers,” the strike was ended
with none of the original resolutions met (Hall 214). Soon afterward, another
violent strike broke out in Gaston County North Carolina. “Gaston County
epitomized the phenomenal wartime growth of the southern textile industry, as
well as its postwar instability” (Hall 214). This was probably the most violent
strike in the history of the textile workers battle. The strike ended with the
plice chief dead, a leading unionist shot in the back, looting of union
buildings conducted be police organization, and the State militia intervening on
behalf of the mill. The strike feel with their leader’s death, the aquital of
her killers, and a conviction of seven union members for the killing of the
police chief. Another such battle in Marion, North Carolina stopped before it
started. The company expected the strike and when the picketers arrived, the
sheriff and his deputies were waiting. The thrrew tear gas at them and when they
turned to run they were shot in the back. It was later found out that the
shooters had a list of men to kill and aimed specificly at them, the strike
leaders (Hall 217). This wave of strikes was largly unsuccesful, but because of
the extreme measures used to break the strikes it was obvious that they were
effective and supported. With the noteriety theat came with these extreme cases
the role of the TWUA and the voice of unionism spread. In 1930, the Dan River
Mills (Dan River, North Carolina), the largest textile company in the south
began its struggles. The vice-president of the TWUA went to the city, and hoping
for support fromt eh AFL poured all of the unions recources into the workers.
However, as the AFL did not provide support the strike withered away. In 1932
hoseriy workers in High Point, North Carolina walked out. They demanded and end
to wage cuts and a few days later 15,000 other textile workers striked beside
them (Hall 218). The union was steadily spreading, but it had not wet reached
its peak yet.
Betwwen the years of 1933 and 1934, the federal government
finally stepped in on the workers’ side. Under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s new deal
laws were extablished to protect the workers rights. A minimum wage was
established and child labor was outlawed. However, in actuality, this had little
effect on the lives of the workers. The little money that the workers made by
the national minimum wage increase was taken back by the mills by raising the
price of rent, workers were still evicted for joining unions (only excuses were
used instead of reasons). However, dispite all of this the union had its largest
growth ever: from 40,000 members in September 1933 to 270,000 members in August
of 1934 (Hall 304). With the ineffectiveness of the NIRA, the workers were
outraged. The President of one local branch of the union asked for federal help
before, as he wrote it, “WE HAVE TO CALL OUR UNION MEMBERS TO ARMS AGAINST THIS
FORDED TAIL EVAIL” (Hall 307). The enraged unioneasts striked across the region
again in 1933, much like those on 1929.
Along with the NIRA the New Deal
releif programs for the unemloyed also helped the stikers. Strikers were
garunteed releif when they went on strike. Also, other New Deal programs were
created. Discrimination because of union affiliation was prohibited. However,
workers were still evictd for joining unions. (Hall 300-301). A native of the
Graniteville Mill in South carolina said that “she had never joined a union, for
reasons that to her seemed the essence of common sence” (Hall 306).
“’There
was no union whatever in Graniteville S.C. before the National Industrial
Recovery act was make law as the Employers would not allow ti… they would
discharge anyone who joined a Union, but after the Law was passed and put in
effect, we thought that we would be protected by the Federal Government [and]
that no Employer could discharge any worker becau7se they joined a Union of
their own choosing.’ On June 19, 1933, just three days after roosevelt signed
the NIRA, she paid her dues and became a full member of the TWUA… On August 8
the second hand got orders to fire her on the grounds that she couln’t keep up
her work. If her work had not been satifactory, she concluded, they would have
fired her long before. They ‘discharged me for joining the Union.’” (Hall
306-307)
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