The Connecticut labor news., 1923-07-13
MILL VILLAGES THE BURNING GROUND OF
 ANGLO-SAXON RACE
Northern Capital Exploiting the Best People of South in the
 Cotton Industry.

Ihe South BurleS It's AnglO-SaX- ons" IS the title of an article in the current issue of the Century Maga- zine in which Frank -Tannenbaum, social investigator describes one of the gravest industrial and social prob bor conditions in it's cotton mill dis tricts. It is particularly interesting in this section because of the attitude of the textile employers just now.
 The immediate problem which the South is called upon to solve, the ar ticle explains, arises from the fact large section of the South of it's purest Anglo-Saxon strain and shut ting them off from contact with the rest of the world in the feudal com munity life of mill-owned villages.
 The state of industrial bondage in which the average southern white mill worker is living offers one explana- ton of the reason why mill owners have resisted so successfully attempts to organize the wage earners on a large scale.
 Between the conditions affecting these thousands of mountain whites, who have deserted their small plots of farm lands under the lure of high CT pay in the mills, there Is a parallel with conditions in some parts of the South among the small negro ten ants who are bound" to the soil In the textile districts a village is built about mill instead of mill being established in a village. The mill owner is the monarch of all he sur veys." He owns the town, the houses are built by him, the school teacher, receives her pay from him, the gro- cery store, the drug store, the cloth ing store, even the doctor, everything is in the hands of the mill man. Even the policeman is paid by him.
 Serfs of the Cotton Mill.
 In other words, 1t is not town but an incorporated village. It IS private property. The people have no politi- cal life .Thety do not vote. They are only interested in making liv ing. ...
 As in the case of the small tenant farmer, almost invariably wages are held back for one payroll period, and in many cases, it is two weeks be- tween pay days. They must go into debt for necessary supplies, and be- debt may be much more than the pay drawn will cover.'' ft
 "A custom of making discounts from earnings advanced in money be- fore pay day prevails in many south ern mills MT. Tannenbaum writes, "and in most cases the discount IS 5 per cent: This charge falls heavily upon the poor, who must have the money as fast as they earn 1t, and who can least afford the drain. When he has once made a beginning 1t is almost inevitable that he should con- tinue" x The mill population is in a world apart, MT Tannebaum explains, and 1t Is a general fact in the milP sec tion of the South that 1t is recog niZed as a caste system.
 Unions Their Only Hope.
 To overcome these conditions and to give to the southern mill worker an incentive to. better his working environments through union organ ization is one of the big problems of the American Federation of Labor today and is calling for volunteer work by many southern social work CTS and investigators who see in the average mill village the burying ground of race of people that gave to American civilization such men as Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, "StonewalP' Jackson, many of whom can qualify as sons and daughters of the American Revolution.
 "They have enriched the life of the South" declares MT. Tannebaum. "These people are now being de- nuded, stripped, washed out, destroy ed. They are being reduced to a state of childish impotence where they have to be taken care of and where they produce nothing"
 Before the mountaineers of the South began to drift with their fam lilies into the mill towns they fur nished the South with many of it's statesmen, governors, and leaders. Now, he declares, so far as the com munity is concerned, they might as well never have been at all" l
 Paternalism of the Owners
 Bound over to the mills, the men have made few feeble attempts to strike for higher pay and better. con ditions, but these strikes are almost always lost, MT. Tannebaum explains. "The paternalism of the mill owners is exceedingly interesting" he says. "It is a matter of pride in one of the large mill centers in the South that a few years ago, when one of their mill owners was threatened with a strike, he said: If you go out l will never take you back He never did.
 'This is the problem that the mill villages is bringing to the South" concludes Mr. Tannebaum. "It is a new conquest by the North, for it is increasingly northern capital that is building the mills and taking from the South part of its best and most cherished, its most fruitful spiritual fountain.
 And this new conquest is wei comed with open arms and made much of The root seems to be in the house It is that which limits the contacts of the mill children with the