The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-04-01
FACE 20 YEARS; STILL FIGHT
Statements BY Gastonia Defendants; Hon. They
Feel About Campaign
By Fred Ellis

home. Great numbers OF workers came mere
to join the union. On Monday groups of dis
charged workers came to the new headquar-
tiers. A mass meeting of night workers was
held on the lot behind the union hall and a
unanimous vote to strike was taken amidst
cheering, singing and yelling. The strikers in
picket line formation went to the mill. The day
help swelled the strikers ranks. A mass
meeting was held in front of the mill gate;
back to the union lot. That night hundreds
of workers from other mills in the vicinity
attended a mass meeting.
The next day the strike committee was
formed where the workers summed up their
grievances. They became an organized army
determined to pit their united strength against
the power of the well organized cotton barons
for better living conditions. So they made
demands against the BOSSES These were
some of the demands
Minimum wage of 500 week.
Abolition of the speeding and doubling up
of work (stretch-out).
Forty-hour five-day week.
Equal pay for equal work for women and
youths.
For sanitary working conditions.
No discrimination against workers taking
active part in strike.
Recognition Of National Textile Workers
Union.
War Is On
The roar of the battle was heard through
out the South. The bosses became extremely
nervous; called conferences amongst them
selves; organized gangsters; tore down the
union headquarters; beat up organizers and
the active strikers-women as well as men.
new headquarters was built by the strikers.
The bosses men tried to raid the new head
quarters on June but were met by deter
mined set OF strikers who were guarding
their lives.
In the exchange of shots fired on the union
lot one organizer was wounded and four depu-
ties of the mill owners. One, the chief of po-
lice by the name of Aderholt, died the next
day. Though the workers defended them
selves the bosses thought they saw an oppor-
tunty to smash the union. Hundreds of
strikers and organizers were arrested and
thrown into jail. Sixteen were charged with
first degree murder. The International Labor
Defense was on the job. Mass demonstra-
tons were held throughout the country and
the world The bosses were afraid to burn
us in the chair but they succeeded in preju-
dicing backward jury and seven of us now
face up to 20 years in Jail. Only the workers
can save us from living death.
But Union Goes On
But putting us in jail will not stop the
progress of the National Textile Workers
Union in the South or the North. The en-
trenched mill barons have had their day. The
workers in the South are marching along
with their northern brothers under the ban
ner of the National Textile Workers Union.
They know that the United Textile Workers
Union Of the A. F. of L. woull sell them out
agafn % it did in the years 1919 ard 1922;
as it did in ElKabethton, Tenn; as it did in
Marion, AZ. Z. lhey know that the A. +. of
L. drives in the South are fake drives done
for the benefit of the textile bosses. They
know that the A. F. of L. union is a COM
pany union and that the bosses want to steer
the militant textile workers into it to prevent