New Britain herald., 1928-11-21
LABOR IN THE SOUTH, PARTICULARLY TEXTILES

dismaily. only tho other day nine Massac congressman, meet ing with New Bedford manufactur- CTS, heard plea that the textile ln- dustry needs government aid in the tNportation of its marketable sur plus something that will force the domestic consumer to pay "dccem prices" for textile products and en- able the manufacturers to pay "operatives d decent wage for their labor" Which must be taken as an admission in high sources that the industry is ill.
 Many New England textile plants have moved to the south: and many New England textile concerns own plants in the South. We have heard much of the "advantagcs of the South," one of these advantages be- ing that labor is cheaper in the south: which also includes the pos slblity of employing child labor without such restraining and hu- manitaran laws as those existing in New England.
 How realistic this cause for the textile migration to the South hap pens 10 br is evident from symposium of southern child laborers in the textile industry writ ten by Wyatt Brown in Plain Talk The picture he paints of southern textiles certainly is nothing to be proud of.
 'Th,y work ten. eleven and, in some instances. 12 hours d day. When the six o'clock whistle blows, they trudge wearily home ward. tOthers begin the l2-hour night shift at this time). These day work CTS sit on the porches of their squalid homes, during warm eve nlngs. in a sort of coma. their mouths dropped open. their bodies too tired to move. There is no mad dash for the wash basin to clean up : for supper. Supper. they know, will be the same monotonous fare of cold canned goods. To wash would mean a trip with the empty pail to the nearest pump on the corner q block or two away In the early morning another blast of steam will call them back to the same consum- ing labors. They are cut off from the rest of the world by isolation, Vltiated energies and ignorance. News seldom reaches them. Few could read it if it did.
 Mill people are considered large ly as imbeciles and objects of pity Mill people admit they are different from other people and they keep apart, aloof. To make friends with them is difficult. To visit them in their various communities is even more difficult. Mill superintendents arrange that. Visitors are made as unwelcome as possible. And these mill superntendents are all-power- full, often very nearly inhuman. In one mill district in Gastonia, North h Carolina. where the workers are treated the worst the superintendent h f,,or ,h ! Dixon line. But there are native superintendents in Henderson, North Carolina, who are the equals of the imported ones.
 And yet at the Cotton Textile Convention in Atlantic City recently, the Southern manufacturers said. Nowhere in the world can q higher standard of living be found among working people than in this section Upon which the Raleigh News and 'leetle too fur since the wages are too low to justify such claims" This is the thing that New Eng land textiles are forced to compete with. It is unfair competition. New England mills cannot expect to meet competition on a scale of depressed humanity. There are certain standards of living in New England, eXacted by law and demanded by a wholesome regard for the common welfare, which does not permit meeting those common in the South. The official state report in North Carolina shows the average wage of a mill worker to be SGG1.44 d year. Male workers at mill in Tender son. not included in this report, re- ceive an average of s9.9o q week. an average secured from pay envelopes gathered at random on August II. 1927, presumably by Mir. Brown. Female workers get S6 and S7 a week. Other mills in the same state pay 122. 7j and S5 cents per day. Startling is the system of forced employment in the mills:
 "Nh"n a child comes of age to begin Worli-the mill makes il imperative that this child shall be-
 gin work" Mr.. Brown continues
 This k done by threatening to take away the privilege of renting mill company's house. and since the wage
 paid takes q nominal house rent into
 consideration. to rent an outside houS" with tn" sarlr wage would be impossible. So there is no alternative C. | The miil does not do this openly, but let q child continue school after he comes of age and in" family vii |.