The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1935-10-24
RADICALS DESTRUCTIVE WORK IN
GEORGIA ..

GEORGlA
One of the most disturbing and depress
ing recent developments in the textile ILL.,
duStrv in the Southeastern States is the
closing of the model mill owned by
Johnson and Johnson at Gainesville, Ga.
It is said this company carried four million
dollars of outside money into Georgia ana
erected mill that is the last word IN mod
ern equipment and a mill village that is the
most modern and attractive IN the South.
We have never heard that the mill mar
agement underpaid its employees or op-
pressed them in any way. There is reason
to believe that the policy of the mill has
been most liberal and considerable. But
radical agitators appeared among the mills
EMPLOYEES and started trouble, which cul-
minated in vicious attacks on two of the
mill officials, one of them the manager Of
the plant.
Now, the owners of the Gainesville plant
announce that they will close and disman-
tie it, saying they are not compelled to OPP
crate it under such conditions as exist, and
BILE and warfare, and possible blood-spill-
ing. Gainesville and Georgia lose four
million dollar textile plant, one Of the IL
dustrial show-places of the State, together
with all the benefits accruing to the COM
munity from the employment of $50 per-
sons.
This Georgia trouble is disturbing and
depressing as additional evidence of the
activities of radical agitatorS in southern
mills Present conditions are probably only
the forerunner of the development in the
South of such conditions as have, in large
measure, wrecked the textile industry Of
New England, permanently closed many CT
the mills and reduced the textile produc-
ton of that section to less than one-half its
former volume
There are two ways in which the Geor-
gia trouble could have been stopped before
it reached the crisis which has developed
The first and logical way would have beer
for the county of Hall to give the manage
ment of the mill that protection of the law
which is supposed to be guaranteed to al
citizens by the constitution and laws, d
Georgia. If Hall county could not do this
it ought to have been done by the power
of the State. The second way would have
been for the majority of the mill operas
tives, who desire to hold their jobs anC
continue at work, to run the agitatofs on
of the mill village. No information ha
come out of Gainesville which Indicate
that more than small proportion of tn,
employees of the plant have been guilt,
of lawlessness, of attacks on mill officials
or making any sort of trouble A large ma
jority would have CONTINUED at work if lief
alone and if law and order had been main
tanned in the mill village.
Under such circumstances, we behev
that honest workingrnen, good citizens
who desire to go about their work and ear
a living for themselves and families, d
terms that are satisfactory to the individual
worker, are justified in taking strong meas
ures to preserve and make effective thei
natural rights when the State fails to pro
tect them. :.
The workers who desired to continue
employment by the mill did not take thi
course; and it is clear that the county: Q
Hall and the State of Georgia failed a
some vital point in the enforcement of tn
law and in affording projections for til
lives and property Of some of it's citizen