Evening star., 1934-08-28
"COOd-WM" Code Fails
to Keep Peace in Great
Industry.

The cotton textile code, hailed Just
a few short months ago by President
Roosevelt as an achievement of CO.
operation. marked understanding and
good WILL" hasn't turned out that way.
And so 750, 900 men and women are
awaiting momentarily the call that
will send them forth from the shops Of
the great industrial centers in the
North and South Atlantic Seaboard
States on strike. This, their leaders
have decided, is their sole remaining
weapon in their efforts to enforce de-
mands for betterment of employment
conditions that failed to materialize
from the new course on which the in
dustry embarked with such high hopes
little more than a year ago.
Wages are too low, hours too long
and the work load too heavy, says
labor, which wants 30-hour week
at the same pay now received for 40.
and says that per capita weekly earn
ings in the average cotton mill this
month are about 81 to So.
Mills Reply.
No other class Of workers has ben
efitted under the recovery act as those
in the textile industry, and mounting
costs coupled with insufficient demand
preclude assuming any additional
load, management replies. Cotton
has gone from Z cents a pound to 13,
1t is pointed out, and to this must be
added the AZ cents per pound process
ing tax which pays the growers
benefits.
There the issue rests, with the Fed
eral Government casting in every
direction for some solution. Already
one effort at mediation has been
spurned by labor.
Unless there are concessions by the
operators, the strike goes on" warns
Frank German, soft-speaking union
chief directing the campaign, who
adds that II President Roosevelt un-
derstood the complicated issues in
volved he would get action.
'Lawmaking by strike" Is what
George A. Sloan Of New York, presi-
dent of the Cotton Textile Institute
and chairman of the Cotton Textile
Code Authority, calls the threat.
The trouble, now rapidly coming to
q head, has been brewing for several
months.
Study Industry.
In June there was O meeting with
Gen. Hugh S. johnson, recovery act
administrator, at which 1t was de-
cided that the Research and Planning
Board of N. r. A. would make study
of wages and hours and the wage
differential existing between workers
in the Northern and Southern re-
gions-another sore spot with labor.
This board, headed by Leon Hender-
son, has submitted its report on wages
hours, and it was adverse to the work.
ers. That on differentials has never
come out, and according to German Is
now 40 days overdue.
When the wage-hour report came
out, the United Textile Workers Of
America called q meeting in New
York, and, on August 13, voted to take
strike action.
No effort was made to treat directly
with the operators before voting to
strike, German says, because they al
ways have refused to deal directly
with the workers, insisting rather on
negotiating through an Intermediary.
German estimates that more than a
million persons are concerned In the
impending walkout. and that Of these,
750, 900 are actually at work. The
others are the idle in the textile trade.
When the cotton industry is running
at full speed, he says, 1t employs
500 ,O0n; some 100000 others are in
allied industrieS-woolen and worsted.
silk and rayon, rayon-making. hosiery,
knit goods, jute and miscellaneous
textiles.
1,2oe Mills Operated.
Sloan figures that 1900 cotton mills
today are employing 100000 persons.
whice would indicate that two thirds
of the strikers strength (using Cor
mans figures on actual employment
In all the textiles) would come from
this source.
The United Textile Workers Of
America have 100000 paid members,
German says, and there are zoe, 900
whom he classes as friendly, but who
are outside the fold because, through
idleness, they have not been able to
pay membership dues.
With o strike developing 50 SOON
after the industry came under code
the first code written, by the way
the question naturally arises as to
why the dificu'ties now looming SO
large were not adjusted ut the outset.
The answer, according to German,
lies in the fact that the code was not
satisfactory to labor to start with,
''but it was the best we could get
at the time"
Admittedly, the code corrected some
abuses of long standing. Minimum
wages were raised from as low as
So and SO week, to 3l2 in the
South and $13 in the North, and
hours were cut from an average Of
81 or 55 (they ran as high as TO
in some places in the South) to 40.
Child labor-under 16-was done
away with. The code was designed
to equalize production costs in q
highly competitive industry.
German admits those were benefits,
but, he says, the code has not helped
those workers drawing more than the
minimum wage, land unless we have
a change, we're going to find that We
are all down to the minimum wage
before long"
At one time, he said, labor had OBJ
| tanned q code provision differentiating
-