Evening star., 1946-05-19
Labor Control Fight Warns in Dixie
AFL With 100000 Members and CIO With $4,000 Campaigns
Seeking Add Million of Now Unorganized

What may prove to be the most sig
niflcant struggle in the South since the
Civil War is shaping up as the two big
labor organizations begin intensive
membership campaigns.
The Congress of Industrial Organiza-
tions and the American Federation Of
Labor have goal of 1000, 900 new men,
bers each. Which union gets them
probably is not so important as whether
they are enrolled and what may happen
to the Southern economy and political
system If they are.
Both unions proclaim there is no po-
litical purpose in the recruiting drives,
but if they are successful, political re-
percussions will follow as inevitably as
the night the day in the uneasy South.
Already there are signs and portents
The CIO, claiming more than 250,0O0
members in the area, has put 125 full
time organizers in the field and will
add 200 more, many of them war vet
Grams. Headquarters have been estab-
lished in Atlanta, Ga. State, regional
and subregional Offices will be opened
and plans have been made for the first
10 months of campaign which may
extend for considerably longer period.
Year-Long Drive Planned.
The AFL, planning campaign of at
least year, refers to its program as
"the most intensive organizing drive
ever undertaken in the South by the
trade union movement" Strategy was
discussed at the Third Biennial Southern
Labor Conference at Asheville, N. c.,
last week The AFL claims 100000
members in the region.
The CIO campaign is in charge Of
Van A. Bittner, shrewd and tough as
sistant to Philip Murray, president of
the CIO and of the United Steelworkers.
The AFL drive will be directed by
George L. Googe, AFL Southern repre-
sentative at Atlanta and executive OFF,
in the area covered.
Bittner, a 61-year-old organization
expert who went to work in the Penn
sylvania coal mines at the age of II,
told the writer the one fundamental
purpose of the campaign is to organize
the workers into CIO unions to bar
gain collectively 1t is not a political
contest. We want to enroll them in the
sincere belief that when man has
economic freedom he is free man.
I'VE don't want the impression we are
invading the South. 1t is an organizing
drive and there are more unorganized
workers in the South than elsewhere
AS to the future, the people of the South
themselves will determine their politi-
cal status
What they might do about it is indi-
Gated by what they did to Martin Dies,
the former Representative from Texas.
after CIO campaign. Dies returned
to his I'd Texas district before the
1914 elections to find his support had
been cut effectively from under him.
He decided not to run.
s Political Action Follows.
James B. Carey. 34-year-old secre-
tary-treasurer of the CIO and an ad-
wiser in the current campaign, often is
given credit for eliminating Dies. This
should rightfully go, he says, to the local
unions. Carey did, however, make sew
eral speeches in Texas during the year
preceding Dies retirement and the ef-
fectuation of his ideas was what dis
posed of the former chairman of the
House Un-American Activities Com
mittee
Actually, it wasn't too difficult to
defeat Dies Carey said. Where the
poll tax operates, as it did here, you
have to get only few thousand voters
to change. But you can't do this by
passing resolutions. There were hun
dreds of resolutions about Dies. You
could put them all in a basket and
weigh them and they didn't add up to
anything. The way to get results was
to form unions and interest the mem
bers in the issues"
What Dies found on his return to
Texas was that large number of
Negroes had been primed to vote against
him, that the strong CIO oil workers
union was requiring members to register
and vote and that several key Demo-