The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-09-16
BY ELSA MILBANK

A SIGNIFICANT beginning in the work of
"A organizing farmers and share-croppers was
made this summer in one of the counties of Ten
nessee. Because the movement showed both def
mite successes and certain definite defects which
are likely to recur in such work. it is worth ana
lying in some detail
The movement was started among the farmers
of Carter County, Tennessee, which contains the
large rayon mills at Elizabethon the scene Of
three militant strikes within as many years. The
rayon mill bosses exercise the strictest control
over even the minor aspects of local politics. BY
deal made with the county officials in 1926,
the mill bosses got an agreement by which they
we're to be exempted from taxes for period of
10 years.
Since taxation is the chief source of income
for the county, and the rayon mills are the only
business enterprise of any SIZE the county i'm
madiately began to sink into debt. Teachers
were unpaid; the schools began to run short
time.
In order to make up the taxation lost by ex-
empting the mills, the county began to raise the
taxes CT the farmers. The tax rate. on the farms
was raised from $2.85 on the 500 to 1925, and
another raise was being considered when the
movement was started among the farmers.
Since rs per cent of the farmers of the county
are owners (even though three-fourths of this
taxation was keenly felt and resented. For sew
eral years the farmers had made sporadic at
tempts to make the mills pay taxes and to have
their own tax burdens reduced. Since, however,
these efforts had chiefly taken the form of
legal suits against the mills, they got the farm
ers nowhere.
1t was not until the summer of 1881 that the
farmers began to organize themselves for a real
fight against the shifting of all the county tax
burdens to their shoulders They organized into
the United Farmers League, and began the cir
culation of petition the purpose of which was
to bring pressure upon the local tax board
The petition addressed to the members of the
tax board pointed out that the rayon mills, in
$780, year of great business depression, had
managed to clear over six million dollars in
profits. On the other hand, the situation of the
farmers is rapidly becoming worse, largely due
TO the fact that the workers whose wages have
been cut or who have been thrown out of work
altogether are unable to buy the produce of the
farms. The petition emphasized that in spite Of
these facts the entire burden of taxation for the
county had been lifted completely from the
shoulders of the mill owners and placed suuarely
upon TIE poor farmers.
The petition contained four chief points the
repeal of the ten-year no-tax agreement made
in 1926 with the rayon mills and the leveIing of
taxes upon the mills The repeal of the tax raise
insofar as 1t applies to poor farmers of the
county, any loss of funds thus incurred to be
made up by special added assessment upon the
mills The payment of back taxes by the rayon
mills since the beginning of the no-tax agree
ment this money to be turned over to an elected
committee of workers, poor farmers and unem-
ployed, to be used partly as q loan fund without
interest to poor farmers, and partly as a relief
fund for the jobless in the county.
The petition further expressed the determine
ton of the farmers Cmany of whom were work
ers blacklisted in the mill strikes not to permit
the rayon corporation to make up these sums by
increased exploitation Of the workers in their
plants, but to stand by these workers in their
efforts to resist further wage-cuts, speed-up and
frightening of hours.
In the formulation of the petition and the
movement itself, certain tendencies had TO be