The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-10-31
TEXTILE BOSSES
BOAST OF LONG
HOURS IN SOUTH
Fight Child Labor Law
at Two Conventions
By ART SHIELDS (Fed. press.)

Health, happiness and living stand
ards of the textile worker of the
United States will continue to be
sacrificed to the struggle between
the South and the North for the pos
session of the industry. That was
clearly indicated at the sessions of
two employers Associations this week
the National Association of Manu-
facturers, meeting in Chattanooga,
Tenn, and the National Association
of Cotton Manufacturers, a New
England aggregation, meeting in
Boston.
Lower wages, lower taxes, higher
efficiency, and consultations of COM
peting companies, were some of the
remedies proposed by the northern
textile employers to stay the move
ment of the industry to the South.
And southern bosses at the Chatta-
nooga meet, exultantly told of the
steady. migration of spindles and
looms to Dixieland, and boosted of
the docile attitude of southern labor
and its So to 60 hour work week.
Bosses for open Shop.
Open shop sentiment ruled the
two conventions. If there was voice
raised in favor of cooperating with
organized labor it was not recorded.
And the heads of two determined
open shop companies selected as pre-
sidents of the two associations.
For another year the public will
have to put up with the denuncia-
tons that John E. Edgerton hurls as
president of the National Association
of Manufacturers. No more garrulous
foe of child labor legislation, shorter
hours for women, and trade unions,
exists in America.
7r Strike-Breaking Record.
And as head of the New England
cotton association we find smooth
bankers representative: Colonel G.
Edward Buxton, Of Providence, pre-
sident and treasurer of the B. B. G.
r. knight Corp, which dominates
the cotton industry of the Pawtuxet
Valley in Rhode Island, and has a
nasty record of strike-breaking and
gunner and evictions from company
houses in 1922. The evolution of this
company is typical of what is hap
pening in the industry, it having
been taken over, through its bond
holders, by group of New York and
Boston bankers several years age.
In the coming year another effort
viii be made by the cotton industri-
alists of Massachusetts, the leading
New England cotton goods state, to
repeal the 48-hour law. With fran
tic gestures the lobbyists of the manu-
facturers will prophesy the ruin of
New England and the transfer of
every place of machinery to the
South where no such legislation
exists. And workers will be told
that unless they take wage cuts their
jobs will go to the Carolinas, Georgia,
Alabama and Texas.
Southern Labor Less Docile.
But there is another side to the
picture. The other side is that
southern labor is losing it's docility
in proportion as it awakes to what is
happening in the world
The Dixie workers are gaining new
desires, for higher standard of liv-
ing, as fine cement roads are laid
through mill towns, bringing diff
ferent world past the door Of the
2.00-a-day operatives. And compul-
sorry education is bringing up a new
generation with the universal ability
to read and write, that many of the
older folks lack.
Fined For Union Membership.
The writer recently attended a
mass meeting of several hundred
Henderson workers three weeks after
the close of the strike. Workers were
being fired for belonging to the union,
but so many came to the union meet
ing, none the less, that two depart
ments on the night shift had to close.
That is the other side Of the picture,
that if developed, will change the
whole issue of southern competition.