The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1922-04-22
LABOR AND FARMER PACT
IS WORKING SPLEND|DLY
Continued from nare ,

legislature New England spinners
advanced the plea that the southern
mills, through cheaper labor. less
restrictive legislation, and their
nearness to the cotton fields. are
underselling the northern mills. The
only remedy they could see is to
reduce wages and increase working
hours to the southern level.
They overlooked the fact that
more than half the cotton mill SPIN
dies in the United States are in
Massachusetts, where a statute es-
tablishes a 48-hour week. For two
years between 1917 and 1921 Fall
River, Mass, mills made profits
equal to their total capitalization on
a 4S-hour week. The great Amos
keag mills at Manchester, N. H.,
operating voluntarily on 4S-hour
week, declared stock dividend of
100 per cent.
Little Wage Difference.
While wages in the south are
lower than in New England, the
legislature adduced testimony which
proved to the satisfaction Of its
members that northern mill viii
lagos, owned by the manufacturers,
are self-supporting, while the cost
to the southern manufacturer for
maintaining villages is 1896, per
worker a week. This brings the
southern mill scale up to within IS
cents week of the northern rate
before the 20 per cent wage cut
was attempted in Rhode Island.
The 6O-hour week is. general in
the south because of the bitter fight
against restrictive legislation made
by some of the same capital that is
now crying out against it's own "un-
fair competition
Not only is much of the capital
of the southern and Rhode Island
mills interlocked. but the mills of
the two sections in general produce
different and nonecompetitive lines
OF goods, as the census bureau has
demonstrated in it's latest study of
the textile industry.
No Competition at All.
Between 80 and 90 per. cent OF
the product of southern mills is in
coarser goods, such as denims,
heavy ducks, drills. ticking, and sta
pie calicoes and ginghams. The only
mills involved in the present strike
which may be said to be competi-
tors OF these lines is the group which
Is owned. lock, stock and barrel by
the Consolidated. owner of 10000
spindles in the south.
In their statements before a. leg
islative committee the manufa ctur-
ers laid great stress upon the part
that ;"cheap negro labor" plays in
the south, but they were soon
brought up against the hard fact
that negro labor in southern mills
is confined to work in the picker
room. dyehouse, and like coarse
work. 1t is we'll; known that the
white and colored races do, not work
together in the south, and that white
labor Id employed exclusively in
most departments. Of the mills. l.
s'Negro Labor Myth.
Several years ago. when congress
was considering a child-labor law,
Witnesses from the south declared
that restrictive legislation was de-
sired to protect white children. They
told congressman that it was not
uncommon for white children going
into the factories, to pass colored
children going to school.
But for the opposition of north
ern manufacturers. it is said, south
ern states before this would have
recognized the evils Of unrestricted
mill labor with proper regulatory
statutes. Every effort to improve
the condition OF the workers has
met with bitter and literally fl
nanced campaigns in opposition that
had Them inspiration in New Eng
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