The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-08-08
BUSINESS Meets
CALLED PRIOR TO
CHARLOTTE MEET
Conference to Start
Great Drive
Continued from Page One)

mass protest. Meetings will be or
gained on the trip South to be held
On the return trip.
Two meetings Of locals of the N.
7. W. U. are scheduled for Wednes-
day evening in Belmont and two
others in Gastonia. Over a thou
sand leaflets are being distributed
today to advertise a mass meeting
which will be held tomorrow eve
ming in the union hall in Charlotte
During the coming week there will
be Is local union meetings in the
various mills around Gastonia, in
addition to the mass meetings
Thursday evening at the Rex mill
and on Saturday at the tent colony
in Arlington and in Bessemer City.
Throughout Castor County every
local will have a business meeting
this week, to elect delegates, to per-
feet plans for making this confer
ence a landmark in the history Of
Southern labor.
Where locals have been established
in the five states of this section,
they will meet and elect delegates.
New locals are formed daily. The
forces and funds of the NTW are
being taxed to the utmost to meet
the demands of the workers for or
ganizers, more meetings, and i'm
mediate action leading towards a
wide struggle against the bosses and
their wage cuts and stretch-out. But
the work is steadily progressing de-
spite handicaps. There is every in
dication that the coming conference
will be very successful. At the
Bessemer City Conference, 200 dele
gates were expected; 227 were there
when the conference was called to
order. About 500 delegates are now
expected at Charlotte, who will
represent 100000 workers directly,
and many more indirectly.
Three additional organizers have
been sent out in the past two days,
one to Virginia, one to Alabama,
and one to. South Carolina. Ten
thousand stickers have gone out, and
are being stuck on the walls of mills
thruout the Carolinas, Virginia,
Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama.
AS soon as the enraged bosses
have them torn down they are i'm
mediately replaced The sticker5
call upon the workers to form mill
committees where they have not al
ready done so, TO send delegates to
the conference, and prepare for the
coming struggle. One hundred
thousand leaflets, printed calls to
the conference, are being distributed
broadcast.
The alertness of the defense coun-
sci in the first skirmish with the
Manville-Jenckes prosecution in the
, Gastonia case, in forcing the APP
pointment of Judge Barnhill to re-
place Sink, and forcing the change
of venue, has given impetus to the
campaign of the union. The work
ers have gained courage and conf
dence from the prompt and efficient
manner in which the International
Labor Defense and it's corps of at
torneys Immediately assumed the
offensive, exposing the tactics of the
prosecution to send the % textile
leaders to their death or long prison
terms, and the demands they pre-
sented which forced this gesture of
fairness" The rapidity with which
the Workers International Relief
and the union sent additional forces
to replace the arrested, and reestab-
fish tent colony headquarters, has
had its effect.
However, the defense organiza-
ton consistently stresses that the
danger is still imminent, that the
change of venue does not necessarily
mean fair trial and that the need
to make the mass protest of the
working class felt acutely is greater
than ever.
The Bessemer City conference
started the great drive to put an
end to the slave-like conditions the
textile workers are now enduring,
to increase wages, lower the intol-
erably long hours, fight the stretch
out, and in the process build the
National Textile Workers Union
into a powerful instrument of strug-
gle. The Charlotte conference will
go much farther than the Bessemer
conference did. 1t will concretize the
demands and formulate tactics to
launch the struggle which must
reach every textile worker in every
mill of the South.
Notice will be served upon the
mill barons that the intolerable con-
ditions of open shop exploitation
must end. There can be no doubt
of the rehabilitation of the south
ern textile workers. They are surely
and definitely turning to the left
so much so that even strikes led by
the reactionary and corrupt u. T.
w. are forced to assume militant
aspect in spite of the bureaucrats
who are unable to hold the workers
down to ordinary A. F. of L. tao
tics.
1t is the job of the Charlotte Con-
ference to organize this unrest and
discomfort and give it direction. For
this reason it is destined to become
an historic landmark in the Ameri-
can labor movement. i
II is NOT the D1ap RI hao;r =.