The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-01-30
THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN
THE SOUTH


book, Darker Phases of the South, of how "Al
the workers in the family work in the same
mill in fact they have to do so to keep the
house. The mill man estimates certain av-
erage number of workers per room," with adj
vertisements which appeared in the early
American newspapers. One of these, in 1914,
read "Wanted: Several families who have
number of children who can be employed in a
factory. Such families will be furnished with
convenient accommodation on application to the
Madison factory" In the New England mills
of that day, as in the South now, the hands
were expected to vote as the agent directed.
The only difference in old England was that
the hands were not permitted to vote at all.
Terrific Toll For Workers.
Throughout the world the working class has
always paid uniformly terrific toll in wages,
hours and conditions when brought into the
textile mills. Recent events in the South have
focused attention upon the 60-hour, and more, =
work week in that section as well as the six to I
$12 weekly wage In Chinese mills the work !
day is IL to 16 hours-sometimes IS. Children
as young as six years of age found in these
mills Mems wages average 1872 cents day;
womens Is cents; children's 3 to IL cents. In
the Indian cotton mills unskilled wages are 1a
to SO cents day; skilled 81 to $21 month";
children 16 to "a cents day.
In his pamphlet, Condition of the Working
Glass IN England IN 1914, Frederick Engels
wildly describes the condition of children six
seven and eight years of age who were re-
ouired to toll from ten to twelve hours daily in
the small, close rooms of the textile mills Of
that period Up. 1867. He reproduces letter
Up. 1870 from stocking weaver who wrote
"Last Monday got up at two in the morning
and worked to near midnight, the other days
from six in the morning to between eleven and
twelve at night" Engels further testifies Up
1907 that, "In the neighborhood of my house
near Manchester. l have heard that the
children were obliged to work so long thers
that they would try to catch moments rest
on the stone steps and in the corners of the
lobby"
Textile manufacturing being, as we have
seen, a pioneer industry, the problem of hous.
ing for the operatives has usually been solved
by the bosses through the erection of com.
pany barracks Of one kind another. The
mill villages of the present industrial South
the cottage system of early England, and
the company dormitories of early New Eng.
land all were part and parcel of the same
process-the creation Of privately-owned viii
lagos around the mills. Engels thus describes
one of these villages in England: every.
where heaps of debris, refuse and offal;
standing pools for cutters, and stencil =,
Small one-story, one-roomed huts, in most OF
which there is no artificial floor. Kitchen,
living and sleeping room all in one Up.
1872 eff anyone wishes to see in how little
space human being move, how little air
hn hrno fhn hnuy
civilization he may share and yet live, it is
only necessary to travel hither Up. 3D." An
other observer testifies to the same effect con-
corning the corporation boarding houses OF
early New England where bedrooms were
crowded and uncomfortable and little if any,
better ventilated than the mills The sleep
ing apartments would not be endured so pas
sively if the occupants had not first become
habituated to such unwholesome air in the
mills. Often six or eight girls occupied sin
gle bed-chamber One finds it difficult to
stir even to breathe freely" journal of Poll
teal Economy, vol. XVII, PIP. 20-2D.
Analogies are always dangerous. The one
which we have just drawn is no exception I'M
less its limitations kept clearly in mind.
The first is the difference between world poll.
teal and economic conditions when textile
manufacturing was introduced in old and New
England and conditions OF today. linen cap
italism was in its infant stage. Today textile
manufacturing is being introduced in the South
of this country and among the colonial and
semi-colonial peoples after the arc of capital
ism has already swung aside 1t follows, per-
force, that under the later conditions the his
tory of the industry must take radically diff
ferent course than formerly, not only because
of world economic changes but also because
of the changing temper of the working masses
in this third period of postwar capitalism Of
the last stage of finance aptalism-imperal-
ism-imminent world imperialist war.
Trying to Divide Negro and WhitA
This is we'll illustrated in the South today
When, in England, large numbers of workers
became militant or moved to the opportunities
that nascent capitalism made possible, the Eng
lish mill barons brought in large numbers Of
Irish to take their places at lower wages. In
New England, when similar conditions arose,
first the Irish were brought in Ito supplant
the $1,000 Americans), later the French Can
adams and finally the Southern European
races. In the South today, the employers are
striving to create antagonisms between the
Negro and white workers in the hope of keep
ing the Negroes as a labor surplus to be called
in when the rising militancy of the white work.
ers makes itself felt. Here, however, the en-
ployers are counting without the Negro work.
ers who have shown high degree Of class
solidarity with the white workers in recent
years, refusing flatly to serve as strikebreakls