The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-12-27
BY MIRA PAGE.
(Conti1lued)

(ContiRued)
Send IN your orders no1o for "SolHhera CG'
ton Mills and Labor" With its riUid port1dyGt
of the conditions of the Southern textile toorh-
erS, Southern Cotton Mills and Labor" saouid
haze luidc distribution
The advent of the world war opened up
new period of union struggles in the south.
In 1914 strike broke out in an Atlanta cotton
mill when some union men were fired. OF
the 900 workers involved, one hundred and
thirty were children under sixteen years of
age, earning as low as twenty-five cents week
Two-thrids were women, who were receiving
considerably less than the mems average wage
of $685. for over sixty hours labor The com
pany Immediately cut off food supplies at its
store and evicted most of the strikers and their
families. The union undertook to feed the
strikers, and built a tent colony for shelter.
After year. the strike was declared lost and
the union stated that all it could do was to
pay transportation charges for workers seek
ing employment elsewhere. The strike was
typical of many that followed in Tennessee,
Georgia, Alabama, and the Carolinas. Wage
increases, shortening of hours, elimination of
child labor, and union recognition were usually
the issues involved. In North Carolina over
thirty thousand workers unonized and affili-
ated to the u. 7. W., and another five thousand
in South Carolina and Tennessee joined up.
The |. W. W. also conducted some spontaneous
strikes in North and South Carolina, but no
permanent organization was established. A
widespread reduction in southern hours of labor
conceded with this drive, and marked lessen
ing in the number of child laborers below four
teen years of age was also achieved.
The strike which took place at this time at
Anderson, S. c., was termed by U. T. w. lead
ers "the first, real, endorsed legitimate strike
in the south"#-a significant comment in view
of the period of fifteen years in which the
U. T. W. had held undisputed jurisdiction over
the southern territory, and the large number
of unauthorized" strikes which had occurred
there. However, due to Dixie mill hands en-
thusiastic drive for unionsm, the u. T. W
could claim in 1919, $4,000 dues paying men,
bers in the carolinas, with 81 new southern
locals. One of these locals was composed of
Negro workers. piekers and dye-house laborers,
who had been segregated along race and craft
lines
The weaknesses inherent in the u. T. WIS
form of organization soon became apparent
By 1920 the nu-r Der of southern locals had
dropped to almost half, with CORRESPONDENCE
heavy losses in union membership. The de-
preston of 1921 gave the mill owners an OPP
portunity for introducing wage cuts ranging
from So to IS per cent in all southern cotton
mills. Southern textile unionists in various
sections struck against these wage cuts, but
the U. T. w. suspended strike benefits during
this period In the face of company terrorism,
injunctions, evictions, arrests, and cutting off
of supplies, and with no effective support from
organized labor, the workers were literally
starved back into the mills. Only few paper
locals survived. The workers were thoroughly
disillusoned with the U. T. W., AMI Temporal
rily too discouraged to continue their union
efforts. However, an occasional effort was
made, as that in Hendersonvie, N. c., in 1927,
where a sx-week's strike for higher wages
and union recognition occurred. But this strike
was lost and another local of the U. T. W. dis
appeared before it was we'll started. Therefore.
when the National Textile Workers, an indus
trial, revolutionary union organized in the
latter part of 1928, entered the southern field
at found approximately 100000 mill workers
totally without organization. (This new union
had developed out of revolt of large sec