Loray Mill strike
Loray Mill strike | |||
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Date | April 1, 1929 | – September 14, 1929||
Location | |||
Goals | Forty-hour workweek, $20 weekly wage, union recognition, no stretch-out system | ||
Methods | Striking | ||
Parties | |||
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Lead figures | |||
Fred Erwin Beal Ella Mae Wiggins
Sheriff Alderholt O. Max Gardner
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Casualties and losses | |||
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The Loray Mill strike of 1929 in
Background
Located in the south-western piedmont of North Carolina, Gaston County had the ideal resources for manufacturing. Because of the large potential workforce of former sharecroppers and failed farmers,[1] many northern industrialists moved south in search of a reduced cost of labor.[2] World War I brought great prosperity to the southern cotton mills, "fueled largely by government defense orders for uniforms, tents, and war material. Thousands of new jobs opened in the mills, and wages soared to all time highs."[3] This boom was to be short-lived, however, and the prosperity that the workers enjoyed soon disappeared. The luxury items they had purchased on credit were now stretching their budgets so much that they could hardly afford to put food on the table.
Managers introduced the "stretch-out" system in which spinners and weavers not only doubled their work, but also reduced their wages. "I used to tend forty-eight looms," complained a South Carolina weaver in 1929, "while under the stretch-out I have to tend ninety looms and I couldn't do it. Three years ago I was makin' over $19 a week. Now I make $17.70." "By the late 1920s some mill workers' wages sank as low as $5 a week."
Strike
On Saturday, March 30, 1929, the union held its first public meeting in Gastonia. Ellen Dawson, co-director of the strike and vice president of the NTWU, urged workers to stand resolute. The "seemingly frail" woman was in fact a "tough, experienced organizer and superb stump speaker."[6] At 3 pm, Beal took a vote and the workers voted unanimously to strike.
On April 1, 1929 1,800 mill workers from the Loray Mill walked off their jobs to protest intolerable working conditions. The strikers demanded a forty-hour workweek, a minimum $20 weekly wage, union recognition, and the abolition of the stretch-out system.[7]
In response, management evicted families from mill-owned homes. In an effort to retain order, Mayor Rankin asked Governor
The situation continued throughout the next few months as the workers continued to strike despite the return to production at the Loray Mill, making their situation appear hopeless.[10] On June 7, 150 workers marched to the mill to call out the night shift. They were attacked and dispersed by sheriff's deputies. Later that night, four officers including Police Chief Aderholt arrived at the tent city and demanded that the guards hand over their weapons. An altercation ensued and Chief Aderholt was killed. Two of his officers and several strikers were wounded.[11]
Trial
In the aftermath, 71 strikers were arrested. Eight strikers and another eight members of the NTWU, including Beal and Clarence Miller, were indicted for the murder of Sheriff Alderholt. During the trial, a juror went insane after seeing some disturbing evidence. As a result, the judge was forced to declare a mistrial. When news of the mistrial was released, a general wave of terror ran through the countryside, with the anti-strike "Committee of One Hundred" prominent in the vigilante activity.[12]
The defense team included:
During the early part of September, mobs of men gathered up strikers and ran them out of the county.
In a retrial in the Alderholt case, seven men were charged with his murder, six of whom were Loray Mill employees. All were found guilty of second degree murder and sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment by Judge M.V. Barnhill.[22]
Aftermath
Beal and Miller were released on bail and fled to the Soviet Union to avoid their prison sentences.[22] (On their ship were American Communist writer Myra Page and her husband John Markey.)[23] Disillusioned by his life in the USSR, Beal subsequently returned to the United States and surrendered to the authorities in North Carolina. He was later pardoned.[24]
Ella May Wiggins
On September 14, 1929, following her return to North Carolina, a pregnant Ella May Wiggins was shot in the chest as she rode in the back of a pick-up truck with her brother, Wes, and 2 other men—all headed to a union meeting in Gastonia. Two car loads of armed men pulled the truck over on the bridge leaving Bessemer City for Gastonia. The strike collapsed shortly after her murder.[27]
Impact
Overall the strike was not a success, but during the same time period there was a series of other textile strikes throughout the South. The main objective of these strikes was the abolition of the stretch-out, and some met with a measure of success.
In popular culture
Gastonia novels
Because of the violent and dramatic events surrounding the mill strikes in Gastonia, North Carolina, the labor struggle became a symbol of "the strength, courage, and tenacity"[31] of workers in America. The recognizable incidents taken from actual strikes during the period led to the publishing of no less than seven strike novels within four years.[32] These are commonly referred to as the Gastonia novels:
- Anderson, Sherwood: Beyond Desire
- Dargan, Olive Tilford: Call Home the Heart
- Fielding Burke(= Olive Dargan): A Stone Came Rolling (1931)
- Lumpkin, Grace: To Make My Bread (1932)
- Myra Page: Gathering Storm
- Rollins Jr., William: The Shadow Before
- Vorse, Mary Heaton: Strike!
"In each of the novels, Gastonia is given as the focus of the universal
Later works
North Carolina novelist Wiley Cash's 2017 book The Last Ballad is a fictionalized version of the Loray Mill strike.[38][39]
See also
Footnotes
- ISBN 9780807822371), p. xi
- ^ Yellen, Samuel. American Labor Struggles, (New York: Harbor Press, 1936), p. 292
- ^ Huber,Patrick. "Mill Mother's Lament: Ella May Wiggins and the Gastonia Textile Strike of 1929." Southern Cultures. (2009): 83. Web. 4 Oct. 2011.
- ^ Huber, 84
- ^ Salmond, 18-22
- ^ Salmond, 20
- ^ Huber, 87
- ^ Salmond, p. 24.
- ^ Yellen, p. 304.
- ^ Yellen, p. 308.
- ^ Christensen, Rob. The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008), p. 72
- ^ Chuck McShane, "The Loray Mill Strike in Gastonia: Demands for Higher Pay and a 40-hour Workweek Ignite a Furor in Gastonia in 1929," OurState.com
- ^
ISBN 9780252095832. Retrieved 8 January 2018.
- ^ "Investigation of un-American propaganda activities in the United States. (regarding Leon Josephson and Samuel Liptzen) by the United States Congress House Committee on Un-American Activities". U.S. Government Printing Office. 1947. pp. 25–28 (Josephson), 29–32 (HUAC record), 32–50 (Russell HUAC bio), 36–39 (Copenhagen), 39(Frey). Retrieved 10 January 2018.
- ^
Haynes, John Earl; Klehr, Harvey (2000). Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America. Yale University Press. pp. 80–81. ISBN 978-0300084627. Retrieved 8 January 2018.
- ^ "Amy Schechter, Daughter of Dr. Solomon Schechter, Held for Murder in Strike". Jewish Telegraph Agency. 23 July 1929. Retrieved 8 January 2018.
- ^
Salmond, John A. (1995). Gastonia 1929: The Story of the Loray Mill Strike. University of North Carolina Press. pp. 200 (fn 16). ISBN 9780807822371.
- ^
Pope, Liston (1942). Millhands & Preachers: A Study of Gastonia, Volume 15. Yale University Press. p. 287. ISBN 978-0300001822. Retrieved 8 January 2018.
- ^
Irving, Bernstein (2010). The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920-1933. Haymarket Books. p. 25. ISBN 9781608460632. Retrieved 8 January 2018.
- ISBN 9780252068409.
- ^ Yellen, p. 312.
- ^ a b "Gastonia Strikers Get Long Terms," Salem Statesman-Journal, Nov. 5, 1929, pg. 3.
- ^
ISBN 9780252065439. Retrieved 4 August 2018.
- ^ Christensen, p. 72
- ^ Huber, 85
- ^ Huber, 97,98
- ^ Huber, pg. 102
- ^ Yellen, 304
- ^ Yellen, 322
- ^ Yellen, 326
- ^ Cella, Laurie. "Radical Romance in the Piedmont:Olive Tilford Dargan's Gastonia Novels." The Southern Literary Journal. 39.2 (2007). 37. Web. 4 Oct. 2011.
- ^ Blake, Fay. The Strike in the American Novel. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1972.165. Print.
- ^ Urgo, Joseph. "Proletarian Literature and Feminism:The Gastonia Novels and Feminist Protest." The Minnesota Review. 24 (1985). 67. Web. 28 Oct. 2011.
- ^ Blake, 166
- ^ a b Salmond, 188
- ^ Salmond, 189
- ^ Blake, 176
- ^ Neufeld, Rob (September 29, 2017). "UNC Asheville grad Wiley Cash introduces new novel about Loray Mill strike". Asheville Citizen-Times. Asheville, North Carolina. Retrieved January 26, 2021.
- New York Times. New York City. Retrieved January 26, 2021.
Further reading
- Fred Beal, Proletarian Journey: New England, Gastonia, Moscow. New York: Hillman, Curl, 1937.
- Theodore Draper, "Gastonia Revisited," Social Research, vol. 38, no. 1 (Spring 1971), pp. 3–29. In JSTOR
- Robert W. Dunn and Jack Hardy, Labor and Textiles: A Study of Cotton and Wool Manufacturing. New York: International Publishers, 1931.
- William F. Dunne, Gastonia: Citadel of the Class Struggle in the New South. New York: National Textile Workers Union/Workers Library Publishers, 1929.
- Robin Hood, The Loray Mill Strike. MA thesis. University of North Carolina, 1932.
- Dan McCurry and Carolyn Ashbaugh (eds.), "Gastonia, 1929: Strike at the Loray Mill," Southern Exposure 3/4 (Winter 1974)
- David Lee McMullen, "Strike:The radical insurrections of Ellen Dawson." Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2010.
- Liston Pope, Millhands and Preachers: A Study of Gastonia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1965.
- John A. Salmond, Gastonia, 1929. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
- Wiley Cash, The Last Ballad. New York, William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017
External links
- Charlotte Observer newspaper images at UNC University Libraries