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Example research essay topic: Textile Mills In The South - 2,738 words

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Why did the textile workers union in the southern United States spread so rapidly? The textile industry was, at one time, one of the largest industries in the south. Starting in the late 1800 s with small local looms and spreading to become corporations controlling the south and whose influence stretched internationally. One of the souths first textile corporations originated in Gaston County, North Carolina, and its huge success led to the opening of mills across the Carolinas and Virginia. As these industries grew they began to control more and more of their employees lives. These huge corporations were permitted to take advantage of their workers because of the individuals inability to fight back.

The employees of these mills lived in conditions resembling that of slaves before the civil war. They were worked grueling hours in inhospitable prisons called textile plants, yet were paid on average less than any other industrial worker in America. In the early twentieth century a sentiment of contempt began to grow between the laboring class and the all-powerful corporation. The masses began to push for union representation.

The industry's numbers represents the importance of this industry. Textiles were the foundation of southern economy. In 1900 there were one hundred seventy-seven mills in North Carolina, but by the early nineteen twenties, that number had grown to over five hundred. Fifty were in Gaston County alone, and by 1929 there were more than one hundred mills in Gaston County which could process cotton, with nearly seventeen thousand workers earning their living exclusively from the mills (Williams 29). Textiles were a booming industry in the south. South Carolina employed only 2, 053 people in the industry at the turn of the century, but by 1920, nearly 50, 000 people worked in mills, one sixth of South Carolinas population.

Virginias textile industry grew just as quickly with the incorporation of the Riverside Cotton Mills which had only 2, 240 spindles and a mere one hundred looms. By the turn of the century the mill expanded and operated 67, 650 spindles and 200, 000 looms. Growth seemed to continue almost exponentially until the depression set in in 1929. It could easily be said that the depression was the cause of the ill will that the workers felt toward their employers. Although the mills seemed to be doing great, grossing sales in the billions of dollars, the working class in the mills were seeing very little of the industries success.

Textile workers earned less than any other laborer. With the success as abundant as it was in the textile industry, it is no wonder that the laborers sought unionization since they were seeing so little of the profit at their end of the industry. In 1902 only one textile workers union in Virginia was reported by the state Labor Commissioner. It had forty members, of whom none were employed (Smith 52).

So, massive strikes were impossible to organize and because of this the workers had little leverage. There were still small local strikes that were mostly unsuccessful. One of which was reported in Mill on the Dan. When Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor visited Danville, Virginia where in response to their attempts to organize hoped to catalyze the endeavors.

A single mill went on strike in a city that was supported by five others. The company did not compromise, and slowly the workers trickled back to their jobs. In 1929 the first notable strike broke out in Gaston County. This massive strike was preceded by a brief strike in nearby Mecklenburg County, and other smaller labor disputes in counties surrounding Gaston, but this strike, known as the Loray Mill Strike, began the massive spread of unionization sentiment in the south. The year of 1929 marked the boom of the spread of unionization in the south, agitated by the success of the Loray Mill strike.

South Carolinas, as well as Virginias industry executives were fearing the spread of this push for unionization would spread across North Carolinas borders and into their states. Their fears were not unwarranted. The last major labor battle in textile south was in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina between pro-union laborers and the J. P. Stevens Company. Worker there joined the TWU (Textile Workers Union) and then merged with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union of America to form ACTWU (the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union of America) creating a union giant with over 400, 000 members.

Soon afterward nearly all of the souths textile corporations were unionized. From 1929 when the TWUA was first formed, to 1976 when the ACWU and the TWUA merged, over 140, 000 textile workers had joined the union. Why did the union gain support so rapidly? There were several factors that led to the expedience of expansion.

First of all, leadership was a major issue in the growth of the union. A new whisper rose in Gaston county and throughout the South, the voice of labor leadership asking concessions from the employees (Cope and Wellman 163). Because of the terrible conditions workers had to endure it wasnt very difficult for the leaders to carry the masses into the unavoidable labor battle. History has proven that any oppressed people can by persuaded to rise up with the aide of proficient leadership. Hitlers rise to power is but one example among many. The civil rights movement is another headed by Martin Luther King Jr.

and Booker T. Washington. The rise of the working class in Russia under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin is still another. The textile workers in the south are no exception.

In the textile industry, the oppression was rooted in working conditions and and salaries. As the industry had grown, mill towns sprang up. These villages were built by the mills, and housed its laborers. At first these towns seemed to create a healthy symbiotic relationship between the employees and their employers, but these mill towns werent the free housing and free living utopias they were marketed as.

These towns began to resemble the plantation houses and surrounding slave houses during the period of slavery in American history. Much like the slaves the textile workers worked in trade for housing and food. The mills offered a paycheck, but they also offered a line of credit at a mill owned store, which was then deducted from the individual's paycheck. Rent was also deducted. There were cases when workers came home with only a few cents left on their checks after deductions were made. This relationship does not seem beneficial to the worker, but it worked under the close bonds of local ownership.

One small time mill owner, when strikes began to pop up, noted that, Last winter, when the snow was on the ground and times were hard, we took care of our employees, and they appreciate it; theyre not going back on us at this time (Cope and Wellman 164). However, as more and more mills became incorporated and workers lost touch with their employers, these serene conditions in the mill towns changed to conflict. One conversation in Rise Gonna Rise is a testament to the new conditions. Weve been working all our lives in the cotton mill, and you [the speakers wife] cant take no more. I just wish theyd get somebody up in there thats got enough sense to run the mill without trying to push the help to death Im gonna retire (28). The wifes response to this statement was simply, He says hes gonna quit, but he aint.

Its his life (28). The industry heads intended to keep these people in this slave like position. They paid them little so that they couldnt save up money to leave and even used threats to deep workers in the mills. One worker said, It was a stinking job.

I got paid minimum wage. Two dollars and something My supervisor told me, youd better do a good job and youd better not quit because you wont get another job anywhere if you do. She asked him why, and the only response he could think of was Because we need a spinner (Conway 92). One employee possibly characterized the mill best when he called it a sweatshop, slave prison (Hall 187) The villages were in as bad shape as the relationships between mill owners and employees were. In Like a Family the author found a study of the cotton mill villages conducted by the government. The report was not commendable.

Piedmont farmers who moved to the mill village found much of what they had come for regular pay, easier work, and familiar surroundings- yet at a cost they could not have foreseen. At first, it was heaven to them to work in the mills and draw a payday, however small. But drawing a payday did not always lead to a better life, partly because of the condition in the factory villages. The smaller villages and those in the country are often primitive in the extreme Larger villages, particularly those located in urban areas and owned by sizable corporations, boasted of grated roads But these communities were the exceptions not the rule Villages are dirty and streets unkept, and the very sight of the village is a horror. Workers lived in these conditions and worked in prisons. They worked in factories that had no windows and were surrounded by barbwire fences.

The executives had been able to push the workday to an average of twelve hours, while the law prohibited an individual to work over ten. The executives found loopholes in the labor laws, and by doing so employed children, working them up to even fifteen hours a day. Knowing all this, the motivation of the workers is obvious: they wanted change, and a better life. This motivation was but one of the reasons the TWU spread so quickly.

However, motivation alone was not enough to create change. Without a union to back them, the workers could do little about this outright oppression. These conditions were but one of the reasons that the spread of the TWU was such a rapid growth. In conditions like this, people are willing to do anything. They are much more motivated to create change and at every opportunity they took advantage of anything they could to benefit them and to decrease the powers of the textile giants who controlled their lives. All they actually needed was for the opportunities to present themselves.

The TWU had much help, but until they found their leaders who organized the masses of willing people, their mere desires and hopes were useless. This leadership came in many forms and from many different people. Each single battle or strike seemed to have its own organizers. It seemed that the people were reluctant to join unions for fears of fulfilled threats. However, organizers persisted. For various reasons, from political aspirations to simple human kindness, leaders stepped up and exited workers into unionization.

The executives at a Virginia mill noted that, The union has held quite a number of meetings, to some extent coercive measures [have been] adopted, in order to get the operatives into the union (Smith 51). The president of Dan River Mills, Fitzgerald noticed that, It is true that in many instances the nefarious influence of the professional agitator has found fertile soil in the American workman's brain (Smith 264). These professional agitators as Fitzgerald called them were the men who stepped up to protect the workers rights. However, Fitzgerald seems to speak of these men with a negative connotation but this was because he was an executive at the Fitzgerald and Ray Co. (Smith 265). Robert Walsh was one of these political agitators.

As a member of the National Workers Labor Board (NWLB), pushed the workers to organize your unions, strong and liberal, fearless and far-seeking, and to push until there will remain not one wage earner in the country deprived of full voice in determining the conditions of his job (Hall 186). Walsh could have possibly started single-handedly the influx of workers into unions. The event that marked the turning point of the battle between the companies and the small unions began in Columbus, Georgia. A mill in that area fired employees who recently joined a local branch of the TWUA, and as a result a strike incurred. Walsh prompted the NWLB to intervene on the workers behalf. The NWLB set up laws pertaining to that particular mill which forced the company to abolish yello-dog contracts prohibiting its employees to join unions.

Although these laws only pertained to that individual mill, the success achieved spread new hope in union throughout the south. Between 1912 and 1915 a resurgence of strikes flowed across the south, especially in South carolina. For a period of time conditions had improved because of the labor shortage caused by WWI (Carlton 255). After WWI American men who had given up their jobs to their wives, came home expecting their jobs back. The weman wanted to keep their new found freedom, so the new influx of help created a surplus in the labor force. As an excessive number of workers eventually converged a situation somewhat similar to that of the Dust-Bowl Okies developed (Williams 29).

Williams was referring to the situation during the great depression in which thousands of farmers migrated west to california where they hoped to find work in agriculture, but found that the overabundance of labor there created harsh working conditions and small salaries. The situation there as well as the term Okies was popularized by in The Grapes fo Wrath. The TWU, which was founded in 1901 in the northern New England mills, gained 70, 000 members in the years following the war (Hall 186). With the unions new found strength a series of strikes traversed the south between 1919 and 1921, flowing like a wave and changing the face of employer-employee relationships.

The wave began on the outskirts of textile mill concentrations. In Columbus, South Carolina the union struck in selected mills, then in 1912 a wave of strikes moved through South Carolina and ending finally in 1915. Theyre demands were union recognition and a forty-eight hour workweek. The TWU now centered on North Carolina. One hundred and fifty workers walked out after their weekly pay was cut in half when the wartime bonus was dropped. They called for union support and the next day the TWU banner was behind them as Highlands # 1 plant struck as well.

Rather than negotiate the company closed both plants. The Governor of North Carolina, Thomas Bicket also played a part in the spread of unionization. Bicket outlawed discrimination in hiring on the bases of organization affiliation. The plants were reopened to a workweek less five hours, yet an unchanged pay rate. This union success only instigated union growth even further. Within a few weeks these standards spread to mills in Belmont, Concord, and Kannapolis (Hall 189).

Southern textile workers had finally begun to see what the union represented and as laws were created to prohibit discrimination because of union affiliation, it was easier and less risky for employees to sign the union card. By the end of 1919 the TWU had recognized 45, 000 members in the Carolinas alone (Hall 194 - 196). The Great Depression of 1929 hit the textile industry first. With the drop in wartime goods, mills were forced to close simply because there was a vast overproduction, and without the wartime demand, the surplus was not being bought up. As early as 1927 the textile industry felt the depression creeping upon it.

The union fight fell off as mill owners simply could not afford to meet strikers demands, and when strikes did occur plants simply shut down and owners were happy not to have to run all winter long at a loss. However, by 1927 the union's flame reignited. In Henderson, North Carolina a walkout began the resurgence of the TWUA. Although the strike failed with threats of evictions, it did gain the TWUA eight hundred members. The hardest of the unions battles were yet to be fought. In 1929 violent strikes broke out.

Unsatisfied employees were fighting against the stretch-out policy of the mills. This policy laid-off individuals and forced larger workloads on the remaining workers. First, Elizabethton, Tennessee walked out. After the Sheriff, J.

M. Moreland, a major unionist backer was forced out of office and a local businessman who suppor...


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Research essay sample on Textile Mills In The South

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