The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920-1933 [Reissue ed.] 1608460630, 9781608460632, 9780395074114, 0395074118

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Citation preview

THE LEAN YEARS

A History of the American Worker

1920-1933

THE LEAN YEARS Irving Bernstein Introduction by Frances Fox Piven

Haymarket Books Chicago, Illinois

. . .Books ThIS· ed"Itlon publlS'hed in 2010 by Havmarket First published in 1969 by Houg.hton Mlfflm V 1969 Irving Bernstem Introduction er, Martin Horowitz, Wilford G. Hunter, Paul Jacobs, Ramon E. Ruiz, Mrs. Rachel R. Seldin. and Hyman Weintraub. Paul Bullock's contributions (good cheer was by no means least) must be described as massive. Mrs. Anne P. Cook edited and Mrs. Lois Hurwitz typed ~ ~anuscript. e~. with customary assiduity and c:are. Many libranans and archiVists put up with unreasonable and UDSe8S0nable demands. Since they are so numerous and I should not want to discriminate, I thank them in a body. The follOwing persons were kind enough to read the manuscript, and they o1fered many suggestions for its improvement: Benjamin Aaron, H. M. Douty, Herman Kahn, George E. Mowry Melvin Rothbaum, Karl de Schweinitz, and Craig Wylie. Ultimately' I am responsible for errors and dellciencies in the book. ' Sherman Oaks, CaliEornia

Introduction

of the Great Recession of 2008, many observers began to look back to the era of the Great Depression for the lessons that period could offer about our ongoing economic and social troubles. And there is no better way to begin the search for lessons than in a reading or rereading of Irving Bernstein's two-volume masterful history of the 1920s and 19305. Bernstein's project in these volumes is to write nothing less than a comprehensive history of American workers during the climactic decades that transformed the country. He approaches his task with a zeal for the facts that we associate with the best of investigative reporters, follOwing each lead wherever the trail goes, and I think it is this radical empiricism that makes his work so valuable and so enduring. He wants to know everything that bears on the experience of working people, and he draws his sense of what is Significant broadly from the social sciences. So we learn a lot, about the changing demography of the working class, shifting patterns of settlement as European migration slowed and internal migration from farm to city increased; about changes in wages and hours and overall employment, the new developments in production and the organization of work; about speedup and the often suffocating influence of small-town churches in league with employers; about company towns organized like plantations, and factories seeded with employer spies and goons; and about the paralysis of the unions and the voting patterns of workers. These are all relatively conventional "variables" in descriptions of the working class. However, Bernstein's zealous empiricism leads him to go beyond the usual material to provide a detailed and wide-

WITH THE ONSET

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THE LE,\"i YEARS

XI"

, .k.(rlL "sistmll'(' that took lIncom'entional fOnll . . 'eyO /.\\01 . 11Ulgmg sun. d t 'Itions self-help effOlis, and shih,s. , b ,etions eJllons r, ., III mo ,I , , n simph- be ,Ul empilicist, a compiler of Of course, no one C,I . 'I' d · but tll(' facts. Obnous y, JU gments have to the f:\Cts an d notIling I d I ' . b 'I . I evidence is to be gat lere ,w wre to st'areh be Jll'lde a out \\ lIC I J .' . , ' 'ts reliability, ,Uld how to orner. pres{'nt, and for It how to assess I o. . . . I 't, blv the researcher. whether IIlvl'shgahn' reIIIterpret It. neH a b" .h . , t " approaches hIS 01 hel Sll ~ect WIt a ph11050porter or IlIS on,Ul. , ' . . ,t the ... ·diments of a theon'. BenlstplIl across the ~ cls), of the rolling Piedmont hills out to the sea: the Roanoke,. the Om. the Broad, the Catawba.. the Yadkin, the Wllre.ret". tM Parol..... the Tiger, the Saluda.. the Rocky, the Savumah, This historic southern land with its profoundly agricultural tradition S6tmlt'd far remo,-ed, indeed. from the dynamic centt'n of Americu s0.ciety - the great cities of the East, the Midwest. and the Far West with their agglomerations of money. worken. technology. production, and culture. Yet, here in the Piedmont. in this remote and unlikely region. events occurred in that fateful spring that were to foreshadow in the most remarl..-able detail the turbulent labor history of the whole nation in the decade that follo~-ed.

IN

1

The agricultural character of the Piedmont began a slow meta. morphosis after Appomattox. The ready a~-ailabilit)· of water power at the fall line of the rivers. of bituminous coal. of raw cotton, of a favorable climate, and, above all, of cheap labor proved inviting to the textile industry, The invasion by the mills stepped up markedly in the present century, By the time Herbert Hoover 1

z

THE LEAN YEARS

. ed President on the 4th of March 192 9, the was maugurat as' area ha d become th e paramount textileIachIan , Sou th e~ Appa'on of the United States, The stations on the main producmg regI th Railway through the Piedmont from Wash • t f the Sou ern rou e 0 I ad like a directory of textile centers: Lynch ington to Atanta re 'p' S I' b • 'II G eensboro, HIgh omt, a IS ury, Charlotte e, r vill d G' 'I ' burg" DanVl G /In Spartanburg, Green e, an ameSVI Ie. The Gastoma, a ey, d I'k bea d S on a strmg ' the railroa 1 e and the ng mill Th 1 towns cIustered al 0 Idom out of sight of a . e ocal boosters I was se traveer ., B bb' , Z 'th b ' ' ill ' so fter accents Sinclair LeWIS a Itt ill em , ragged echomg of a mill to a mile. They knew whereof they spoke, for the textile industry formed the fulcrum of economic life and the outloo,k for the future of 'turned upon it. The manufacturmg census of 1M7 , , , _ , th e regIon for example, revealed that the natIon s cotton textIle prodUCtion was concentrated in the South, 67 per cent as measured by yard. age and 56 per cent by ~alue. Of some ~,lOo,ooO workers in all branches of the industry ill the late twenties, about 3 00,000 were in the South, with 100,000 in North Carolina, 6g,000 in South Carolina, and 25,000 in Tennessee. The predominant segmen~ of course, was cotton, but rayon made its appearance at this time as did the hosiery mills, escaping northern unionism and high wage rates. The community acknowledged the standing of the industry by yielding to its management the decisive voice in shaping southern affairs. "The cotton industry," George Sinclair Mitchell remarked, "reproduced for its owners the position of power held by the masters of plantations." Sinclair Lewis, after a trip to Marion, North Carolina, in 1929, put it characteristically: " . . . the mills control the banks, the banks control the loans to small businessmen the small businessmen are the best customers of the profession~ men - even when the latter are professional men of God - and so the mills can back up the whole human train, down to the clerical caboose." On issues that affected their interests the millowners exercised fum control over the machinery of state and local gOY. ernment. Nearly all representatives and senators from the southern textile states in Washington felt it their sacred duty to protect the industry against outside encroachment in such matters as

REVOLT IN THE PIEDMO!l.'T

3

foreign competition, the child labor amendment and federal investigation of working conditions. When an ~asional critical voice was raised in protest, like that of forty-one southern churchmen in 1927 in "An Appeal to Industrial Leaders of the South," the millowners' hostility guaranteed that it would not be heard. But, despite general prosperity in the United States, all was not well with the industry at this time. Economists muttered about the "siclmess" of textiles, as they did about coal, pointing to the gnawing problem of overproduction in a shrinking market. The downturn began in 1924, preceding the onset of the Great Depression by half a decade. A leading student of the industry, Claudius T. Murchison, observed that an average of twenty-five textile shares fell from $144.50 in 1923 to $71.48 in 1930, almost all prior to the crash. Less than half the southern mills paid dividends in 1929, and there were many bankruptcies. He noted "the extraordinary instability of operations with which the industry is cursed" resulting from economic forces that "constitute a perfect carnival of violence and unrestraint." In the twenties phenomenal gyrations in the price of raw cotton caused fluctuations in output that had no relation to demand. The postwar emphasis on the "treacherous whims of fashion" was hard on an industry accustomed to staples. The flapper's newly revealed lmee dimples were eyed pleasurably by all men except those in the textile business. Style even infected denims, ginghams, Osnaburgs, overalls, draperies, curtains, upholstery, sheets, and flour bags. Competition from abroad and from other fibers, notably silk and rayon, took large bites out of the domestic market for cotton. Finally, the machinery for selling mill products through the commission merchant generated continuous downward pressure on prices. An unrationalized industry, consisting primarily of small, locally owned units, was helpless against these forces. Instability forced mill management to take a long hard look at costs, primarily labor costs. Each mill strove to capture a larger share of the shrinking market by producing more at lower unit costs. The pursuit of individual salvation ended in collective damnation. The tools with which employers turned the screws on labor were basically the stretch-out and night work. The stretchout (known as the speed-up in other industries) was the Ie-

4

. the worker operate more machines without an qUlrement that T tile firms North and South, introduced this increase in wages. ex late twenties. '. Th e manner IS . ill ustrated /I . the system gendera bYtl m pocryphal, that went the rounds in the South by a story, ou ess a at the time. e plant and asked for a job. The boss said A man wen t to th . ·11· ' "All rightl but before we give you a Job I ~I ~lve you a test." Th boss gave him a hand brush and saId: You throw that ·d be h as far as you can." The fellow had been a baseball an :d he Bung the brush down to the other side of the I payer, d "All . htl th . b . weave shop. The boss sai : fIg e JO IS yours. You run all these looms."

h·

The stretch-out, W. J. Cash wrote, "violated the whole tradition of the South." Southerners were wrenched out of their native easy_ going ways and required to ~~end more en~rgy than the climate permitted. The device for ralsmg output qUIckly at low cost was night work, called by President Thomas F. McMahon of the Textile Workers the "blight that is in our industry." Though many employers detested it, no one was influential enough alone to lead in abolishing the practice. l The South's greatest asset in its bid for industrialization was its workers, for their services were in enormous supply and could be bought at pitifully cheap rates. They came almost exclusively from two sources: the poor white tenants and the mountain people, both predominantly Anglo-Saxon and long settled in the area as subsistence farmers. There were virtually no migrants from other regions or immigrants from foreign lands. The South had many more potential workers than the mills could absorb, creating a chronic labor surplus. The tenants and the mountaineers shared a common derivation from a poverty-stricken agriculture. In 1927, for example, average annual gross agricultural income in ten southern states was only $609 as contrasted with $1611 in the rest of the nation. The mill was an attractive alternative; 500 families in Gaston County. North Carolina, studied in 1926-27. had an aVerage income of $1313. "The factory held out a promise," in Harry M. Douty's words, "that the land had not fulfilled." That promise was

REVOLT IN THE PIEOMOXT

5

more than economic; in place of the isolation of the [ann, the factory offered the human contact of the community and the glamour of town life. When Ishma Waycaster, the m~untain girl heroine of Fielding Burke's novel, received from her schooltt'acher a subscription to a women's magazine, It opened gates to a way of living so enticing in comfort, so engaging in form, so ravishing in color, that it seemed nothing short of celestial. . . . Those doorways, those halls, those vistas of bedrooms, thuse shimmering bath-rooms, those gleaming Boors, those radiant nooks and corners of beauty, with the graceful beings from another world, curving, bending, smiling, always smiling. They took her breath.

When Ishma and her fellow workers came to the mills from the mountains and the farms they brought little with them except children, sometimes not even a surname. The region had a high birth rate; measured by procreation, North Carolina ranked first among the states. This was critical in the mills because the unit of employment was the family rather than the individual, a condition accepted with equal grace by both parties to the employment bargain. From the employer's standpoint, the family was more efficient. Many jobs required nimbleness of finger and keenness of eyesight; hence the employer's interest was in the young rather than the old. Children, not the mill, assumed the obligation to support those no longer employable. Finally, the employer subsidized housing and sought a maximum yield in labor from his outlay. To the worker in a rural tradition family employment seemed in the nature of things. He had little interest in and less knowledge of education as an avenue of improvement for his children. Since juvenile delinquency was common, he preferred the mill to the gang. And, most important, he was incapable of supporting his family on his own earnings. It was a condition of survival that his wife, or his children, or both should work. J. J. Rhyne found as a consequence that "relatively few children . . . were not working in the mill or else caring for younger brothers or sisters while the mother worked." One class of family, however, was virtually barred from employ-

6 . factory: the Negro's. "The iron tradition of ment 10 t~e cotton I hard wrote, "is that no white man will " As a resu It, 0f Some the South' Paul f B tans ry room with a N egro. work in the ~;un:;~;s in North Carolina in 193 0 , fewer than 100,000 texti Ie d The J'obs they filled were the least attractive 3000 were co ore . oal rollers scrub bers, an d sweepers. '. th hi h d I - those 0 f fi rem en, c wner recognized at s c eap an P entifuI d d" The sou th em millo I was his primary asset an portraye It WIth glow_ labor supp y . 'd"Thi population,"Presl'den t J0 h nE. Edgerton 0 f the mg pn e. s him If th . al A . ti'on of Manufacturers, . . se .a sou em textile Nation ssocla . dIed is a native SOlI ill which exotic radical . executive, ec ar , ... t thrl've . d oes n Ism o , for the worker of the . South has a heritage of tu d Americanism that . . . makes him a dependable factor in :d:s~." With the prospect of persuading a northern factory to move, this reverential language gave ~ay to the vulgate of the marketplace. "I believe," H. A. Wheeling, secretary of the Florence South Carolina, Chamber of Commerce, wrote a potential migr:mt, "you will find the labor situation here unusually attractive. Our wages for female labor range from $6 to $12 per week." These southern millhands were, in Edgerton's phrase, indeed of "native soil," displaying the characteristics of a rural people. They retained the farmer's individualism and, in the case of the mountaineer, went beyond to a militant independence of spirit. "Every tub," they would say, "must set on its own bottom." These workers were, as well, conservative, heedless alike of both change and progress. Those who had grown cotton in the lowlands were accustomed to spending six months in the year "settin' and study_ in'," and the mountain folk to even more. Life's pace dragged, without hurry or bustle, reflecting the objective of "the maximum of comfort with the minimum of exertion." Their anger, slowly and rarely aroused, was passionate and violent and quickly passed. Emotion was normally soaked up by the churches, preponderantly the evangelical Protestant sects. Religion provided an intense personal experience and the church was the focus of noneconomic communal activity. Closely related was music. Here was a people constantly lifting their voices in song, unable to "smother down" their notes. Their music appealed "to the hands and feet more than to the head." Homogeneous and ingrown, U

REVOLT IN THE PIEDMONT

7

they fused social isolation with sectionalism into an abiding distrust of outsiders, especially those from the North. The millhands were industrial nomads, moving constantly from job to job, seldom staying long enough to grow feet "with roots to 'em."' Their only way to protest ubiquitously bad conditions was to quit. Hence the mills struggled with an abnormally high rate of labor turnover. The workers replied to complaints: "Movin's cheaper 'n' payin' rent." The price of shiftlessness was backwardness. 'When the Saxon Mills of Spartanburg, South Carolina, installed bathtubs in their houses, one worker used his to scald a hog and others to store wood, coal, and potatoes. For the millhands this world was without hope and time stood stilP The machine that controlled this transitory labor supply was the mill village. This institution arose historically out of the need to group and house workers for a mill set down in a rural area. Since the labor was poor and so unable to house itself, and local real estate capital was not available, the burden fell upon the factory. With time, however, the purpose shifted to giving the millowner control over his labor force. Tom Tippett wrote: He owns the community and he regulates the life that goes on there after the day's work is over in his mill. He has the power to discharge the worker at the mill, to refuse him credit at his store, to dump a worker's furniture out of a house, to have him expelled from church, to bar his children from school, and to withhold the service of a doctor or hospital. The manager of a South Carolina mill declared disarmingly, 'We govern like the Czar of Russia." Company houses were located near the mill so that the employees would hear the factory whistle at 5 A.M. A study of North Carolina villages in 1926-27 revealed that the houses averaged 4.1 rooms, 71 per cent had running water, 70 per cent had inside toilets, 93 per cent had electriCity, and virtually none had telephones. For this the millhand paid the very low rental of $4 per month, deducted from his pay. These residences were of relatively good quality. In Marion, on the other hand, Sinclair Lewis found "bonny homes" without running water or toilets, with overcrowd-

THE LEAN YEARS

8

~ wallpaper, and with clapboards he could "This packing box on stilts" h ing, with newspaper, °lr fi with his !Itt enger, , e pry apart , whl'ch we teach them [the workers 1 that ", the way ill wrote, IS h esults of honest labor are a splendor unlike in this cOllnm' t e r " th f the hO\:e!s of the Old World, , " at 0 , C1 d an implement of socIal stratIfication in the Housm serve as f h 'II , ", Workers lived in one part 0 t e VI age and f ' Is h' II mIll commumtv, "( , supervisors pro eSSlOna , w Ite-co ar people "UptO\~11 owners, ' h f ' d ' dependent artisans) in anot er. I there were a teachers.' an Ind as the geograp h'IC an d socIa 'I fr on t'ler. "I t Would .. ' stream It serve ' thinkable" wrote Liston Pope, m most uptown homes be as u n , d' . ' ta ill' Vl'te a 'common ml'llh an d' of Gastoma . to mner as It Would be to invite a Negro." This cleavage carned over to the churches. Those who suffered from segregation harbored a deep resentment. The millowners sought to brighten this drab existence with welfare work. Most important, because of the low level of educa_ tion and the high incidence of illiteracy, was support for the public schools. The mills customarily provided all or part of the income of the superintendent and the teachers, thereby gaining dominance over policy and personnel. In addition, they often supplied community buildings, cafeterias, hospitals, playgrounds, and related facilities and equipment. Home economics, desper_ ately needed to overcome diet deficiencies of animal proteins inducing pellagra and respiratory diseases, was sometimes taught to women. The mills, of course, subsidized the churches by providing land, meeting construction costs, paying the minister's salary and giving him gratuities at Christmas and at other times for trips, As a result, religion was a branch of the textile industry. "The ministers of Gastonia," one of them admitted, "never take the initiative on economic . . . questions. They are opposed only to things downright evil, such as pool rooms." A candid South Carolina executive put it this way: "We had a young fellow from an Eastern seminary down here as pastor ... and the young fool went around saying that we helped pay the preachers' salaries in order to control them. That was a damn lie - and we got rid of him." 3 Whatever liberality the mills may have shown in paying their ministers was not carried over to paying their workers. The ItOry of income in the southern textile industry in the twenties

REVOLT IN THE PIEDMO~lT

9

is a dismal account of poverty. "Cotton Mill Colic,.. popular during the Danville strike, went:

I'm a-going to starL'e, Everybody will, Cause you can't make a living I n a cotton mill.

Senators who investigated southern textiles in 1929 concluded that the industry's wages were the lowest in manufacturing with the possible exception of tobacco, and that southern cotton mills paid only half as much as the all-manufacturing average. Hourly rates for twelve occupations in five southern states in 19z8 averaged but 29.1 cents, and weekly earnings in four states averaged only $12.83. This appalling condition was alleviated only in small part by goods and services supplied by the mill-village system: low rents, coal at cost, cheap medical service, and other "welfare" activities. The widely held - and nurtured - notion that the cost of living was low in the southern textile towns was nonsense. The facts with regard to hours and working conditions were, if anything, more depressing. The ten- or eleven-hour day was typical and a twelve-hour shift was not uncommon. Rhyne found the sixty-hour week prevailing in Gaston County: 6 A.M. to noon and 1 to 6 P.M. on weekdays, with a shift from 6 to 11 A.M. on Saturday. At the Loray mill the turn was twelve hours and at Marion twelve hours and twenty minutes, sometimes hitched to a twelve-hour Saturday to produce a work week in excess of seventy-two hours. As already noted, night work was normal and women and children, who constituted a large segment of the labor force, were employed after dark. Even in the best of the mills the nature of the work imposed severe strain and was carried on amid a terrible din of machinery in temperatures near 85 degrees. In the worst, like those in Marion, Sinclair Lewis discovered not only "clamorous shuttles ... and ghastly fatigue," but also filthy Hoors, revolting toilets, and snuff chewers spitting into the drinking fountains. It is difficult to imagine which prospect was more disheartening for the mother of a large family: to start a

'IRE LEAN YEARS

10

. h a mill or to end it, exhausted, and then begin '1 4 Iong shift m suc the cooking and household chores for her farru y. . · legI'slation of the southern textile states was a , The pro tec ti ve hollow shell. South Carolina, at least, had no workmen.s comAI bama posed no limit on hours; North Carolma and . pensatlOn. a . tr' ted the work week to sixty, Tennessee to fifty-seven . ' G eorgia res IC and South Carolina to fifty-five hours. In all these states children fourteen and over and women were allowed to work at night. When, on July 1, 1929, Japan prohibited .night work by women and children, China, India, and the Umted States shared the distinction of being the only important nations to countenance this condition. It is likely that the failings of enforcement were even more serious than the statutes themselves; if the industry had not resisted investigation so vigorously, one could speak with more authority. The only survey was made by five members of the South Carolina House of Representatives in 192 9. They concluded that the record was "replete with instances of violations ... in regard to the regulations of working conditions in the textile manufacturing corporations." The South Carolina Commissioner of Agriculture, Commerce, and Industry almost invariably dismissed complaints, prosecuting only five violators in three years and imposing a maximum fine of $50. The legislators found his department in "a state of inertia and lethargy," and himself "quite wakeful" in only one respect, "to suppress and excuse practically every violation of the labor laws." This lends credence to the common observation that children under fourteen worked in the mills. 5 These wage and hour conditions gave rise to a notable economic issue of the period, the North-South differential. Though reasonable - and unreasonable - men disputed over its size, no one doubted its existence regardless of yardstick. A survey of hourly rates in twelve textile jobs in 1928 showed an average of 29.1 cents in five southern states as contrasted with 41.4 cents in New England. A B~reau of Labor Statistics study of weighted average hourly eammgs for seventeen occupations revealed a difference of 43.6 per cent in 19z8. For that year the same agency found ~eekly earnings in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Alabama averagmg $12.83 as compared to $19.16 in New England. The census un'

REVOLT IN TIlE PIEDMONT

11

of 192 7 showed that annual earnings in cotton goods in the South averaged $67 1 in contrast with $1012 in the remainder of the nation. The argument that cheap housing and welfare services justified this spread was discounted by a group of southern scholars who studied the problem. On the contrary, the differential, according to Business Week, was "the lure dangled before the noses of harassed New England mill owners." 6 Despite these wretched conditions, southern cotton-textile workers were completely unorganized. In fact, unionism in the North was also weak and there were deep cleavages between organizations in the industry. Much the most important was the United Textile Workers, affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. In 1929, UTW reported its membership at 30,000, less than 3 per cent of the 1,100,000 workers in all branches of textiles. The whole membership lived in the North and almost half of it was concentrated in the semiautonomous and growing American Federation of Full-Fashioned Hosiery Workers. In basic cotton textiles only 10,000 of half a million workers were organized, primarily in Salem and New Bedford, Massachusetts. In fact, UTW declined in cotton in New England during the twenties with the shrinking market and the southward flight of the mills. It made only the most irresolute efforts to counter these forces by organizing the South. To retain its tiny foothold, the union shifted at this time from militancy to union-management cooperation, notably in the Naumkeag experiment at Pequot Mills in Salem, conforming thereby to the general drift of AFL policy. "The union," Robert R. R. Brooks concluded, "appeared to consist almost entirely of a suite of offices, a complement of officers, and a splendid array of filing cabinets." In addition to internal weakness, UTW suffered from a long and bitter history of rival unionism stemming from "the distinguishing characteristic of textile unionism ... its centrifugal tendencies." These contending organizations, Brooks wrote, have proselyted each other's members, broken each other's strikes, disrupted each other's meetings, and exhausted the vituperative possibilities of the English language in mutual vilification. If one union has been less abusive than another, it has

1.2

THE LEAN YEARS

apparen tl y been the result. of an imperfection of imagination rather than a deliciency of smcere malevolence. Itself a combined industrial and amalgamated .craft structure, prey to raids from craft ~ions on the ng~t, Principally the Mlllespinners and Lace OperatIves, and revol~honary indus_ trial organizations on t1le left, n~tably the Indu.stnal "~orkers of the World and the National Textile Workers Umon. Thls last, an ann of the Communist Party, sparked the tinder of rival unionism in the Piedmont revolt. This organization grew out of textile strikes in the North and the world-wide shift in Communist trade-union policy in the late twenties. The bitter, violent, and unsuccessful Passaic silk strike of 1926 and the New Bedford cotton strike of 1928 provided the Communists with a nucleus of followers in the industry, whom unv began to expel from its ranks in the latter year. This coincided with the decision of the fourth convention of the Red International of Labor Unions in Moscow in 1928 to move in all countries from "boring from within" to dual unionism. Hence the Communist Party of the United States in 1929 replaced its Trade Union Educational League, devoted to penetrating the American Federation of Labor, with the Trade Union Unity League, a rival federation. The New Bedford left-wingers in a convention on September 22-23, 1928, had already created the National Textile Workers Union, the first of t11e dual unions that were to make up TUUL.7 This, then, was t11e ore body from which the Piedmont revolt was to be fashioned. The jackhammer hole was drilled in the rock; t11e d},namite was in place; the fuse was laid. All that remained was for t11e charge to be ignited and the explosion to follow. That was not long in coming.

unv was

2

·:rus...co~try," a ~outhem millhand declared in the mid-twenties, IS mIghty qUIet, but t11ere is goin' to be a flutter b f 10 "It be I ~L e ore ng. gan gent yin 1927 wiuJ the "Appeal" of church leaders,

REVOLT I~ THE PIED)'(O:>OT

13

criticizing the village system, long hours, low wa~es. night w~)rk for women and children, and the absence of collcctiH' ban!.'lining. No one was listening. It gathered modest force on AII~ust 4, 192 7. when some 800 unorganized cotton-textile emp!oYI't's of Harriet Mill NO.1 in Henderson, North Carolina, struck to restore a wage cut imposed three years before. At the request of Bennett II. Perry, city attorney and lawyer for the mill, Lieutenant Governor Long ordered two companies of national guardsmen to the town on the loth, one commanded by a relative of the owners. Sinl't' there had been no provocation, Long was denounced in the press and withdrew the troops after two days. On the 13th, Alfred Hoffman arrived on the scene. He was in his early twenties, a heavy-set, tough-minded but inexperienced organizer for the Hosiery Workers, trained at A. J. Muste's Brookwood Labor College of Katonah, New York. Hoffman succeeded in signing up some five to six hundred workers as members of UTW. On August 30, the mill evicted nine families of strikers from company houses and the walkout collapsed. It served, however, as a stimulus to the AFL to push organization. In 1927 the North Carolina Federation of Labor sponsored the Southern Summer School for Women Workers in Industry at Burnsville. More important was the Piedmont Organizing Council, launched by the North Carolina Federation in the latter part of that year. The Council held enthusiastic public meetings in the towns of the region, sparked an eHort to organize the tobacco industry, and provided a pattern for similar councils in neighboring states. In October 1928 delegates from six state federations met in Chattanooga to discuss drives in coal and textiles. The following month in New Orleans a southern caucus persuaded the AFL convention to adopt a resolution establishing machinery to map a campaign in the South. 8

3 The flutter blew itself into a howling wind on March 12, 1929, when the first of the great strikes broke out in the tiny community of Elizabethton in the shadow of the Smokies in east Tennessee.

14

THE LEAN YEAlIS

. H v: Iley the conJ'unction of the hproper mineral COnH ere In appy a .h . . h large labor supply of Scotc -Ins mountameers tent m t e water, a ' tax exemption persuaded German rayon free I an d an d a ten- year . t t 't0 Iocate their mills. American Bemberg opened in In eres s . 1926 and American Glanzstoff in 19.z8, both Spankl?g-new plants with the most modem equipment under the same Imported German management. A sleepy county seat of 3000 was transformed overnight into a modem industrial town. By early 1929 the plants employed, excluding the office force, over 3200 people, about 40 per cent female. Local business w~lcomed the German concerns with open arms and persuaded candidate Hoover to give his only southern speech at the ne~ tabernacle. in Elizabethton during the 19.z8 presidential campaIgn. H~ pamted a glOwing picture of the industrializing South and carned Tennessee in the election. The strike was a spontaneous demonstration of unorganized workers with those most warlike members of the human race enraged' girls, in the vanguard. Its origin is traced in the worch of one of them, Margaret Bowen: In October of last year [1gz81 I hired on to the Glanzstoff plant. . . . I was under the instruction deparbnent for two weeks, and after two weeks I was put in the inspection depart_ ment. I had fifty-two girls who worked under me. . . . When I was hired on there I was to get sixteen dollars a week and a raise. The Brst check I got was for $10.08. . .. I asked the foreman what was the matter with my check. He said: "That is all we pay." I felt I had to have more money. When you have to pay five dollars a week for a room and pay board and laundry work yo:.! haven't much left. One day the girls asked me Why they couldn't have a raise. I asked Mr. Burnett, the foreman for a raise for the girls. He said, "No indeed, I will not giv~ them a raise." I asked him if he ever intended to give me a raise, and he said, "No, you are making enough." I said I could not live on what I was getting, and he said I ought to hay a bank account. I said, "A bank account on $10.08 a week;' The first pay in February I got a raise of one cent an hour.

REVOLT IN THE PIEDMONT

That made it $10.64· On Friday before the 12th of March I asked the foreman again for a raise for my girls and he refused. On Tuesday morning, March 12th, while 1 was marking up my time he and Miss Brown, the foreladv walked in the back of my section, and Miss Brown said: '''Ihis one will do and that one will do," and picked out all my girls except five .... The girls decided to strike for a raise if they could not get it any other way. My girls would not weigh any silk or work at all. There was only ten pounds of silk weighed in my section all morning .... They watched me all morning. One of the girls passed me and said, "There are nine sections ready to go out if you will take your girls and walk out." Then the girls they had taken away from me were given $11.20, and another section of girls were given $12.32. . . . They did not give me any raise. . . . We have thirty minutes for lunch. The manager came in and asked me and two other girls if we were planning on a strike. Nobody said anything. He said, "I have heard that you are going to strike at 1 o'clock." Nobody said anything. He said, "If you will stop this we will give the section girls twentytwo cents an hour." He did not say anything about the inspection girls who were doing the work. . . . While he was talking to us Miss Brown was gathering up the other section girls. When she got hold of them they decided that then was the time to strike. Out of 550 girls only 17 were left in the mill. By March 16, the entire Glanzstoff force was on strike and the Bemberg workers joined them two days later. Dr. A. Mothwurf, president of both mills, announced that he would not deal with the employees until they returned to work. Aided by neighboring building tradesmen, the millhands launched Local 1630 of UTW, which enjoyed a phenomenal growth. Sherwood Anderson, who attended a union meeting at which fifty members were inducted, reported that the workers "have got a realization of each other. They have got for the moment a kind of religion of brotherhood." The management at first dealt with the crisis in ambivalent fashion. It sought and on March 13 obtained a sweeping injunction

16

THE LEAN YEARS

that was issued without notice or hearin~ ~~ the defendants. . ddl·tion to the usual prohIbItions, forbade the ". . Th e order, ill a any way . . . WIth corn. strik'ers ta pIC ket at all or to interfere ill . " plainants, their employees, or those seeking e~ployrnent.. ~t approximately the same time Moth~urf ente~ed mto negohation~ to settle the dispute, following the mtervention of federal concIlia_ tor Charles G. Wood. On the night of March 21-22, Wood arranged a meeting in a hotel in nearby Johnson City of Moth"rorf and his assistant Alfred Hoffman of UTW, Paul J. Ayrnon, president of the Ten~essee Federation of Labor, Captain Frank Broyles of the Tennessee National Guard, and J. Moreland, sheriff of Carter County. The parties reached an agreement that provided for rehiring of strikers without discrimination for union membership, withdrawal of the injunction, recognition by the company of shop committees to settle grievances, and a wage increase for Glanzstoff employees to equalize their rates with those at Bemberg. Unfortunately, the agreement was not reduced to writing. When the terms were published in the press, Mothwurf released a statement denying that an agreement had been made or that he had even met with the union people. Meanwhile, the strikers were gradually drifting back to work despite the company's failure to perform. 9 President Green of the AFL then sent his crack trouble-shooter, Edward F. McGrady, to Elizabethton. McGrady, who was to play an important role in the labor events of the thirties, was born into an Irish Catholic family in 1872 in Jersey City, where he received a high school education. MOVing to Boston as a youth, he studied economics and business at night at English High School and boxed on the side. In 1894 he became a pressman on the Boston Herald and actively entered union work, becoming head of the web pressmen in 1907. From there he moved on to key labor positions - president of both the Boston Central Labor Union and the Massachusetts Federation as well as national organizer for the Printing Pressmen. He also won election to the Boston Common Council and the Massachusetts House of Representatives. His experience in both labor and politics persuaded Compers to name him legislative representative for the AFL in 1919, thereby projecting him onto the national scene. McCrady, Time wrote, "slim, dapper and energetic . • •

REVOLT IN TBE PIEDMOST

with a good cigar in his mouth and the double-breasted manner of a gentleman of substance ... strides into strike conferences as Adolphe Menjou might enter a ballroom." By 1929. Ed McGrady knew the labor movement as well as the back of his hand. His intelligence and negotiating skill were among the Federation's brightest ornaments. "Year in and year out," Paul Y. Anderson wrote, " ... I have seen Ed McGrady fight the battles of the poor and oppressed . . . and have never known a more fearless and incorruptible man." 10 About April I, Harry Schultz, secretary of the Elizabethton Chamber of Commerce and employment agent for the mills, told McGrady that the wage scale would be accepted and that 300 strikers would be reinstated. On April 4, however, violence displaced negotiation when the local business community, frightened by the specter of trade unionism, "determined that the strike menace be nipped in the bud." At midnight Hoffman was seized by a mob of twenty men in the Lynwood Hotel, blindfolded, shoved into a car at the point of a gun, driven over the North Carolina line, and ordered "under pain of death" not to return. He thought the leader was a realtor named Perry and the crew included several businessmen and policemen. At Z A.M. an armed gang led by Crawford Alexander, president of the First National Bank, and consisting of the town's 'best elements," hauled McGrady out of bed in his hotel room, ransacked his belongings, pushed him into a car, and drove him to Virginia. A pillar of society, McGrady said, pointed a revolver at him and said he would "fill me full of holes if I returned." At 3 A.M. a third mob, led by an elder of the Presbyterian Church, repaired to the home of J. B. Penix, a local unionist, and dragged him to the ground. When he called for help his sister, a mountain girl, appeared with a rifle. After an exchange of shots, the citizenry fled. Things were warming up. Ignoring the threats, Hoffman and McGrady paraded on the streets of Elizabethton on the 5th, guarded by "young, soft-voiced mountaineers," and lodged themselves in a private home "whose rooms were veritable arsenals of Winchesters." On Sunday, April 7, William Green addressed a throng of 4000 at the tabernacle, pledging the Federation's support to the millhands. The rayon

18

THE LEAN \·E..U\5

tcnnint.)d on n showdown, replied by ruscharg_ management, now dC ing unionists en ml/sse. . d' . 1 6 t od on April 15 by callIng a secon strike that Loca I :.10 coun cr.· .. . his time it was met by Ilnhtary foree, 800 S IlUt d own b0 th 111 ills . T d d~llUk' sheriffs ordered out by Go\'{'rnor Horton . stah' po IICC un ' 'J • h ,nty authorities. Neither testate nor the COl.... an d te IlTer t . h C ' . .1 llnduly since as Mothwurf stated pllbhcly, the uft countr sNell ' . . . , t paI'd the Tennessee polIce dIrectly at an estunated manngemcn . cost of $1000 per day (hoping to be reullbursed l.at{'~) and advanced $50 ,000 to the county. ~s a further comphca~on, apparentlv of interest only to the UnIon attorneys, the polIce arrived in National Guard unifonm carrying Guard arms and equipment in contravention of a federal statute governing the issuance of this property. The purpose of the troops, ,!n George Fort Milton's words, was not "to preserve the peace, but rather to help "the managers of the mills in suppressing the strike." Patrol parties reported to the Gennan superintendent of one of the phmts rather than to their offic.'Crs; a cafeteria fed the "soldiers" and supplied free smokes; Imd the mill provided an officers' club. The strikers picketed in defiance of the injunction of March 13. As a result, some 1250 were arrested and, after a riotolIS trial, 43 were convicted of contempt. Many acts of violence were COmmitted on both sides, cuhninating in the blasting of the town's main water line on May 16. Not averse to 6shing in troubled water supplies, the Communists sent agents in from the NTW strike in Gastonia to stir up rank-and-6Ie opposition to a settlement. The Textile Workers, with the fonnidable power of public authority ranged against them, had no such aversion to an agreement. In fact, several mediation efforts were undertaken. Major George L. Berry, president of the Printing Pressmen's union and a prominent Tennesseean, intervened with, he claimed, Governor Horton's blessing. Mothwurf, however, refused to have anything to do with him. The major, a man hardly inclined to avoid a dirty argument merely because of its irrelevance, exploited the Gennan origin of the management to re6ght World War 1. More important was the AFL overture to the newly elected lieutenant governor of New York, Herbert H. Lehman. Lelunan Brothers had served as bankers for the Elizabethton venture, and

REVOLT IN THE PIED~fONT

19

Lehman himself WllS l\ diredor of American Bemberg until his resignation on April 18. 1929, bt'l'allse of thl' strike. On ~lay 1, the Nt" .... York Ft'd as peaceful persuasion. Rather, it was "a threat to inflict d8ma~e upon the immediate employt>r, between whom and his employees no dispute exists, in order to bring him against his will into a C011certed plan to inflict damage upon another employer who is in dispute with his employees." Bedford Cut Stone Co. v. ]oumeymen Stone Cutters involved a national order by a union to its nlt~mben to refuse to handle limestone produced by Indiana quarries that had gone nonunion in 1921. The objective was to rt10rganize their employees. The court, following the Duplex decision, in 1927 ruled the strike in violation of the Sherman Act and the quarries entitled to injunctive relief. Justice Sutherland held the legality of both the union and its purpose "beside the point." "Where tht' means adopted are unlawful, the innocent general character of the organizations ... or the lawfulness of the ultimate end." cannot serve as a justification." The courts of Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio adhered to the swne view. As significant as the restrictions the courts imposed upon the purposes of strikes were the limits they fixed upon the conduct of strikers. Threats, coercion, and intimidation were, of course, unlawful and were by no means limited to acts or threats of physical violence. The courts intervened if, in their judgment, the conduct provoked fear in the worker's mind. Peaceful persuasion W81 legal provided the objective of the strike was lawful and did not induce breach of contract, including the yellow dog. The rule for payment of strike benefits was the same: lawful on condition that the purpose of the strike was not illegal. The critical development in the twenties occurred in the law of picketing. While all courts held non peaceful conduct illegal, the Supreme Court in 1921 in the Tri-City case imposed severe restrictions upon peaceful picketing. On April 22, 1914, the Tri-City Central Trades Council had struck the American Steel Foundries at Granite City, Illinois, for recognition. The unions displayed a printed notice of the strike at the entrance and posted three or four groups of piCkets with four to twelve persons in each group. There

194

THE LEAN YEARS

were no acts of violence. Nevertheless, Chief Justice Taft ruled that these were "methods which however lawful in their announced purpose inevitably lead to intimidation and violence:· Under the circumstances "it is idle to talk of peaceful conununication:' The very word "picket" is "sinister" and suggests "a militant purpose." Hence such picketing "is unlawful and cannot be peaceable and may be properly enjoined." The court then limited the number of pickets to one at each gate. The Tri-City decision determined the federal law of picketing, and virtually all the state courts follOwed the precedent. Henceforth it was virtually impossible for a union legally to man an eHective picket line. As if to drive nails in the coffin, the court a few weeks later in Truax v. Corrigan struck down an Arizona statute which forbade the issuance of an injunction to prohibit peaceful picketing. Taft held that the law "contravened the Fourteenth Amendment by depriving plaintiffs of their property without due process ... and by denying to plaintiffs the equal protection of the laws." "There is nothing I more deprecate;· Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., observed in a famous dissent, "than the use of the Fourteenth Amendment beyond the absolute compulsion of its words to prevent the making of social experiments that an important part of the community desires in the insulated chambers afforded by the several States" This in spite of the fact that "the experiments may seem futile or even noxious to me. The remaining union sanction, the boycott, was already legally dead in most jurisdictions. In 19o5 the Supreme Court in the Danbury hatters case, Loewe v. Lawlor, had awarded a manufacturer treble damages under the Shennan Act for losses suHered from an interstate boycott of his products. In Compers v. Bucks Stove & Range Co. in 1911 the same court approved an injunction restraining the AFL from publishing the company·s Dame on its "unfair" list. The Federation gave up this list, and the use of the boycott atrophied. 2 OJ

~

The discussion thus far has been of the substantive law, of the rights - or, more appropriately, restrictions upon the rights - of

LABOI\ V. THE LAW

195

unions to conduct their &Hairs. It is necessary now to tum to prol't'!dural law. the means of enforcement, findinF: eXprt"ssion in the injunction, damage suits, and criminal actions. Of thest'. the labor injlmction was mu('h the most important bt- injtmction was .ID invention of the English equity courts, lon~ bt'foft' labor organizations existed, to prevent physical damage to property during the pendency of a suit. In the late nineteenth century American ('Ourts adopted the deviCt~ and extended its ust' to several new areas, including labor. The Debs injunction, obtained by the federal government in the Pullman strike of 1894. p;ave the tedmique both notoriety and popularity. In Cst vott' went to RO(lsevt"lt ratht'!r than to thf! Socialist or tht" Communist. In Philadelphia Thomas I'8C'eJved I proportionatt"ly smaller vott" tn th~ workln~-dass di.trim thin in the middle-dass 42d ward. In the riverfront wards. where unt"mployment was ht'aviest. Thomas polled only 1M of 1&3.000 votes. The political editor of the Atlanta Journal said that Atllntl·' entirt" labor vote was ('ast for Roosevelt. Labor leader John FI'fIY was astonished by the poor Socialist J>fIrformance. The lahor unions as or~anizations made virtually no rontribuHon to Roosevelt's victory. Although Green wu a Democrat and approved of the Democratic eandidate. he maintained an ofRctal silence. The Executive Council of the Federation reaffirmed ita traditional nonpartisan political policy and. in fact. denounced both the Democratic and Republican platfonns. The UnUM Mine Workers adopted the same policy. Speaking for himself. John L. Lewis endorsed Hoover. Big Bill Hutcheson wu chainnan of the Republican labor committee, and Wall, an ardent protectionilt, even endorsed Senator Reed Smoot, the author of the Smoot-Hawley tariff, who had consistently voted against labor. ThtJ needle-trades unions and the Hosiery Workers were for Thomas. The only ODDsequential labor leaders who worked for Roosevelt were Dan Tobin of the Teamsters and George L. Berry of the Printing Pl'eIIlMD. Both were so obviously seeking personal gain that they could have had little effect upon the outcome. Berry wu embittered when Roosevelt, trying to placate the Smith faction with the appointment of a Boston Irish-Catholic, named Tobin to head the Democratic labor committee. Neither Tobin nor Berry made any secret: of the fact that he desperately wanted to become Secretary of Labor.

THE LEAN YEARS

Hence Roosevelt owed the labor movement nothing for his victory. In fact, he made little appeal to organized labor in his campaign, devoting far more attention to the farm and progressive Republican votes. When an official of the United Mine \Vorkers complained about the absence of a collective-bargaining plank in the Democratic platform, Roosevelt called it an oversight and promised to deal with the subject in a campaign speech. He never did. s

3 In the election American workers, like the American people as a whole, voted for presidential leadership. "Currents ... are moving swiftly and with power," Governor O. Max Gardner of North Carolina had written Roosevelt a few months earlier, "sweeping people and laws before them. . . . What this Nation needs is a strong man, with a sense of social justice . . . to guide this Hood of righteous indignation .... The American people are against things as they are. . . . The camp fires of the past are being abandoned," In Washington, Saturday, March 4, 193.'3, was cold, overcast, windy, and dreary. Fifteen million Americans had lost their jobs; the banking system had collapsed; only thirty-three days before, Adolf Hitler had seized power in Germany. "The American experiment in self-government," Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., has written, "was now facing what was, excepting the Civil War, its greatest test." On the steps of the Capitol, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the oath of office in a clear, ringing voice from Chief Justice Hughes, The new President faced an immense throng before the rotunda and millions more at their radio sets. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The money changers had fled from their high seats in the temple. "Our greatest primary task is to put people to work." Roosevelt would "assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people" and would ask Congress for laws to revive the stricken nation. If the legislature failed to give them, "I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis - broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency."

WHAT NEXT?

March 4. 1933. was a watershed. On that day an era eoded and a new one began. When the inaugural parade was over, Morris Markey reported. "Mr. Hoover was weeping as his train drew out of the station toward obscurity." No one knew what the futunl held in store. But it was a certainty that the new RO()Sf!velt Administration and the American people must wrestle with the decisive labor issues of the twenties and the euly yean of the Great Depression.·

j j j j j j j j j j j

J

Notes

To SPARE the reader, I have grouped the notes by chapter here at the back of the volume. A number of manuscript collections have been cited. The Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, New York, contains the papers of Roosevelt, both as Governor and as President, as well as those of Morris L. Cooke and Herbert H. Lehman. The Manuscript Division of the UbIV)' of Congress has the Otto S. Beyer, James J. Davis, John Frey, Ogden Mills, George W. Norris, and Gifford Pinchot collections. The National Archives possesses those of the Committee on Economic Security, the Federal Employment Stabilization Board, the Labor Department, the President's Emergency Committee for Employment, and the President', Organization on Unemployment Relief. The School of Industrial and Labor Relations Library at Cornell University contains a microfilm of the William Green Papers and the collections of John B. Andrews and I. M. Rubinow. The Robert F. Wagner Papers are at Georgetown University. Those of Fiorello H. La Guardia are in the Archives of the City of New York. Some of the United Mine Workers Papers were In the possession of the old CIO and have been transferred to the IndUitrial Union Department of the AFL-CIO. The Pelham D. Glassford oollectloD is at the Institute of Industrial Relations Library of the University of California, Los Angeles. The Harry Lang, Edwin E. Witte, and Arthur H. Young Papers are privately held.

• The notes have been consolidated wherever possible, and the foUowilll short references have been given:

Louis Adamic, My America, 1928-1938 (New York: Harper, 1938 ), cited as Adamic, My America. American Federation of Labor, Proc:eedmgl, cited as AFL, Proceedtngl, with the year date in parentheses. Bureau of the Census, Hlatorlcol StatllUcl of the United SetIfeI, 1789-

511

NOTES

1945 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1949), cited as Histon. cal Statistics.

Conference on Unemployment, Recent Economic Changes in the United States (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1929), cited as Recent Economic Changes. Felix Frankfurter and Nathan Greene, The Labor Injunction (New York: Macmillan, 1930), cited as Frankfurter and Greene, Labor Injunction. Herbert Hoover, State Papers and Other Public Writings of ... , William Starr Myers, ed. (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1934), cited as Hoover State Papers. ' Don D. Lescohier, Working Conditions, and Elizabeth Brandeis, Labor Legislation, volume 3 of History of Labor in the United States, 18g61932, John R. Commons and Associates, eds. (New York: Macmillan, 1935), cited as Lescohier and Brandeis, History of Labor. Robert S. and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1929), cited as Lynds, Middletown. William Starr Myers and Walter H. Newton, The Hoover Administration: A Documented Narrative (New York: Scribner, 1936), cited as Myers and Newton, Hoover Administration. Selig Perlman and Philip Taft, Labor Movements, volume 4 of History of Labor in the United States, 1896-1932, John R. Commons and Associates, eds. (New York: Macmillan, 1935), cited as Perlman and Taft, History of Labor. President's Research Committee on Social Trends, Recent Social Trends in the United States (New York: McCraw-Hill, 1933), cited as Recent Social Trends. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919-1933 (Boston: Houghton MifBin, 1957), cited as Schlesinger, Crisis. Sumner H. Slichter, Union Policies and Industrial Management (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1941), cited as Slichter, Union Policies. In addition to a few well-known abbreviated references to unions, the abbreviations listed below by initials are used for organizations or periodicals: AER American Economic Review ALLR American Labor Legislation Review BLS Bureau of Labor Statistics eR Congressional Record

NOTEs FOR PAGES 1-8

1ASA Journal of the American Stati8tictJl ~ JPE Journal of Political Economy MLR Monthly Labor Review NICB National Industrial Conference Board PECE Pres~dent's Emergency Committee for Employment POUR PreSIdent's Organization on Unemployment Relief

PSQ Political Science Quarterly QJE Quarterly Journal of Economics UMW/ United Mine Workers Journal

• PRO LOG U E

(Pages 1-43)

Claudius T. Murchison, "Southern Textile Manufacturing," Annab. 153 (Jan. 193 1 ), 3 0 , 33-42; George Sinclair Mitchell Tena. Unionism and the South (Chapel Hill: University of North' Carolina Presl 193 1 ), vi; Sinclair Lewis, Cheap and Contented Labor (Philadelphia; Women's Trade Union League, 1929). 14; Liston Pope, MUlhancll and Preachers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942), ISHIi AFL, Proceedings (1929).274; W. J. Cash, The Mind of the Sout" (Garden City: Doubleday, 1954). 345; Working CondUWni of tM Textile Industry in North Carolina, South Carolina, and TenRUle,. Hearings on S. Res. 49, Senate Committee on Manufactures, 11 Cong., 1 sess. (1929),54. 2. Clarence Heer, Income and Wages In the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1930). 12; Jennings J. Rhyne, Some Southern Cotton MiU Workers and Their Village. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1930), 83, 97-98; Harry Mortimer Douty, "The North Carolina Industrial Worker. 18~1930" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1936), 60; Fielding Burke, Call Home the Heart (New York: Longmans. Green, 1932), 11; Paul Blanshard, "Communism in the Southern Cotton Mills," Nation. 128 (Apr. 24, 1929),500; Edgerton is quoted in Broadus Mitchell and George Sinclair Mitchell, The IndUl'tritll Revolution in the South (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Presl. 1930), 37; Wheeling is quoted in Senate Hearings, Working CondItions, 25; Marjorie A. Potwin, Cotton Mill People of the Piedmont (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927), 16; Pope, Millhancll, 86. 3- Tom Tippett, When Southern Labor Sflf, (New y~: Cape and Smith, 1931), 29; the mill manager is quoted in LOIS MacDonald, Southern Mill Hals (New York: Hillman, 1~), 44; Rhyne, Cotton Mill Worker,. 102, 125, 136-37; Lewis, Cheap ••• LtJbor, 18-1 9; Pope, MillhtmdB, 68, 160, 163. 1.

NOTES FOR PACES 8-20

4· "Cotton Mill Colic" is quoted in Tippett, SOf.lthem Labor, 251; Work_ ing Conditions in the Textile Industry in North Carolina. South Carolina, and Tennessee, Senate Report No. 28, pt. 2, Minority Rep. of the Committee on Manufactures, 71 Cong., 1 sess. (19 2 9), 4, 5; Abraham Berglund, George T. Starnes, and Frank T. DeVYVer, Labor in the Industrial South (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1930), 74, 98--99, 124, 127; Lewis, Cheap . .. Labor, 17-18. 5· Sen. Min. Rep., Working Conditions, 2, 4-5: AFL Weekly News Service, Mar. 9, 1929; the South Carolina report was republished in Senate Hearings, Working Conditions, 7-14. 6. Berglund, et al., Labor, 74, 98--99; A. F. Hinrichs, "Historical Review of Wage Rates and Wage Differentials in the Cotton-Textile Industry," MLR, 40 (May 1935), 1173; Sen. Min. Rep .. Working Conditions, 4-5; Heer, Income and Wages, 30; Business Week is quoted in Samuel Yellen, American Labor Struggles (New York: Harcourt. Brace, 1936), 293. 1. Robert R. R. Brooks, "The United Textile Workers of America(unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1935). 114, 182, 260-69, 275. See also Mitchell, Textile Unionism, 3. ~7. 65; Jean Carol Trepp, "Union-Mana~ement Co-operation and the Southern Organizing Campaign," /PE, 41 (Oct. 1933), 607. 612: Lewis L. Lorwin, The American Federation of Labor (Washington: Brookings, 1933), 260; Albert Weisbord, "Passaic - New BedfordNorth Carolina," Communist, 8 (June 1929), 31g-20. 8. The millhand is quoted by Lois MacDonald in "Normalcy in the Carolinas," New Republic, 61 (Jan. 29, 1930). 26g: Douty, "The North Carolina Industrial Worker," 30(}-303; AFL. Proceedings ( 1928), 55-56, 290; Mitchell, Text1le Union#.sm, 63-64· g. The Bowen statement is in AFL, Proceedings (1929), 276; Sherwood Anderson, "Elizabethton, Tennessee," Nation, 128 (May 1. 1929), 527; Duane McCracken, Strike In;unctions in the New South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1931), 1O(}-102; New York Times, Apr. 5, 1929, p. 10; Paul J. Aymon, "Rayon Workers Strike, Elizabethton," American Federationist, 36 (May 1929), 547-48; Tippett, Southern LabOf', ~1. 10. Time, Nov. 23, 1936, p. 15. See also Bruce Minton and John Stuart, Men Who L«ul LabOf' (New York: Modem Age, 1937). 5fH)3; Paul Y. Andenon, "So They Found the Body," Nation, 138 (Feb. 21, 1934),220. u. New YOf'k Timsa, Apr. 5. p. 10. Apr. 6, p. 29. Apr. 8, p. 4, May 11. p. 10, May 26, p. 1. May 27, p. 16, June 2, 1929, p. 6; George Fort Milton, "'The South Fights the Unfons," New Republic, 59 (July 10, 1929). 202-3; Senate Hearings, W Of'lring Conditiom, 44, 48; McCracken, Strilce InfuftCti0n8. 94-95; To In()e~gate Communl.tt ActHntfel In the Unlted Stma, Hearings before Special House Committee, 71 Cong., 2 sess. (1930), pt. 6, vol. I, p. 56; Lehman to

su Mothwurf, Apr. IS, John Sullivan and )oIm O'Hanion to Lrk May 1, Lehman to D. C. Dunlop, May •. Dunlop to u.t.Mn,~a\-:: Lehman to Mothwurf, May 24. Green to Lehman. Sept 86 l...Maftu. to Green, Oct. 7, 1929, Lehman Papers; Green to ~ Mn .. Lehman to Green, May 9. Green to HortuA. May 90 l~ ~ Papers. On September 5, 1930, long afta the strib "'U 0\"" the Court of Appeals set aside the rom;ctions 00 the KroUnd agreement of March ~1-U settled all issues in dispu~ and ~ the injunction unnecessary. ~ Su~~ Court of T~ liNlWd certiora~ on Ja~uary 3 0 , 1931. Mrt::raclcen. S",* ' .....mona, '004. 12. Quoted m Robm Hood, the Loray Mill Strike" (\u\publiahed M..\.. dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1935), 33-34. ItUdy and the equally exhaustive and objective work by Liston Pope (U.hands) provide the basis for this account of tM Gastonia strib and no further citations will be made to etther. See also Fred E. Be.l Proletarian Journey (New York: Hillman-Curl 1937). 11-109. 140; New York Times, Apr. 7, 1929, p. 26; Blanshard, "Communillll ID ... Cotton Mills," 501. 13. The events of the night of June 7, 19S9, have hfttn thf. luhft'd 01 bitter controversy. The account is based upon the carefulltudy by Robin Hood. 14. Judge Frank Carter of North Carolina. after joininl the cIefen.. resigned in disgust over ILD tactics. The ACLU felt that the lac:l of a distinguished attorney from the state jeopard.ized the defendan1l' case. New York Times. Aug. 2, 1929, p. 38. See abo Nell Battle Lewis, "Tar Heel Justice; NtItkm, u9 (Sept. 11, 19a9). 173. 15. New York Times, Sept. 11, pp. I, 50 Sept. 16, p. 1, Sept. 17, p. 23Oct. 21, 1929, p. S4; Margaret Larkin, '"Ella May', Songs," NfIHnft, 129 (Oct. 9, 1929), 382. See also '"The Gastonia Strik...• Haroard Law Review, 44 (May 1931), 11 .... 16. Tlme, May 31, 1948. p. 19; Beal to Lucy and Harry LanK, May 11. 1941. Green to J. Melville Broughton, Dec. 8, 1~1, Lanl Papen. 17. The Kiwanis Club is quoted in Sinclair Lewil, C"-P ... r..fJor, 3~31. The best account of the .trike iBln Tippett, SoutMm LIIHJr, log-55, to which no further ntferences wiD be made. See also lettw to the editor, New R~pubUc, 60 (Sept. 18, 19S9) , la6; N.w fori Ttmea, Oct. 3, p. 1, Oct. 5, pp. I, 8, Nov. ~ Igag, p. I; BeDfuUl Stolberg, aMadness in Marlon: NaHon, lsg (Oct. a3, 19a9), 481.;

that .....

nu.

ea.:

Mitchell and Mitchell, IndwtritJI ~ S01; lArwtI, C,*, ..• LGbor, 10, 16-1 7. __ ..1-..1 P 18. The BraDdon striker II quoted in PaW BI,aahud. "One-Hunurwu • Cent Americans OIl Strike," N.., 118 (May 8. 19d19), 554' N_ York T"nu, July 14, 1~, p. 1; CreeD to Coop, May 30 111e. Green Papen.

s.rac..=-=-:

19- AFL Weeklv Nev» 134-35. 173-1fJ, 18s-gs;

.,..,.". LtIJGr ~., -otpp' •.,.:.

Ir

SZZ

NOTES FOR PAGES ~53

of Labor in the South," Annals, 153 (Jan. 1931), 185; AFL, Proceedings (1929), 60, 265-83; AFL, Proceedings (1930), 85-8., 276-79; Tertile Worker, Nov. 1929, p. 506; Trepp, "Union-Manag~ ment Co-operation," 619, 621; Green to Frank DuHy, May 14, Green to W. L. Hutcheson, May 15, 1929, Green to Brown, May 16, Green to Paul Smith, May 28, 1930, Green Papers. 20. Louis Stanley, "Danville: Labor's Southern Outpost," j\'ation, 132 (Jan. 21, 1931), 69-70; Tippett, Southern Labor, 210-13; Jonathan Mitchell, "Here Comes Gorman!" New Republic, 80 (Oct. 3, 1934), 204; Time, Sept. 10, 1934, p. 12; McCracken, Strike Injunctions 116-20; Green to McMahon, Sept. 2, 1930, Green Papers; Fitz: gerald is quoted in Tippett, Southern Labor, 227, 244, 265. 21. Weimar Jones, "Southern Labor and the Law," Nation, 131 (July 2, 1930), 16; New York Times, Aug. 10, 1929, p. 22; Tippett, Southern Labor, 156-59; Tertile Worker, Nov. 1930, p. S0l. CHAPTER

1

(Pages 47-82)

1. The basic data appear in Historical Statistics, 29, 31; National Resources Committee, The Problems of a Changing Population (Washington: 1938), 88; Harry Jerome, Mechanization in Industry (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1934), 122-25; Edward E. Lewis, The Mobility of the Negro (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), 131-32; National Urban League, Negro Membership in American Labor Unions (New York: National Urban League, 1930), 8; John A. and Alan Lomax, comps., American Ballads and Folk Songs (New York: Macmillan, 1934), xxx; Recent Social Trends, vol. 2, p. 806. 2. Preston William Slosson, The Great Crwade and After, 19 1 4- 1 928 (New York: Macmillan, 1930), 299-301; HistOf'ical Statistics, 33; ''The U.S. Steel Corporation: III," Fortune, 13 (May 1936), 136; H. B. Butler, Industrial Relations in the United States (Geneva: International Labor Office, 1927), 14; Sumner H. Slichter, "The Current Labor Policies of American Industries," QIE, 43 (May 1929), 393· 3. The Daily Mail Trade Union Mission to the United States (London: Daily Mail, [1927]), 81, 84. See also Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, Report of the Industrial Delegation . .. (Canberra: 1927), 16-17, and Andre Siegfried, America Comes of Age (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927), 149; Edward Bliss Reed, ed., The Commonwealth Fund Fellows and Their Impressions of America (New York: Commonwealth Fund, 1932), go. The American employer is quoted in D. D. Lescohier, What II the Effect and Extent of Technical Changes on EmrXoym6flt Security? (American Mana~ ment Association, Penonnel Series NO.1, 1930), U.

NOTES FOIl PACES

53-6a

4· Jerome , MecNmiz.ation, paaiM . . . . and 5· H~ Statistic8~ ?1-ZS.; David Wemtr aub, "'UaempIo, Inh. Econom of 1 1 B\lI"eau al Nation York: 19 9- 938 (New n, and Moulto G. Harold Leven, e Mauric ; 2l~17 pp. I, vol. 1941), n,too. (Wubi e Clark Warbu rton, America', CCIflGCity to CONUm . Brookings, 1934), 28. ..... 1 M~ Lynds, 83; 6. Historical Statist ia, 64-65; DoilfJ Mail, \'01. 13, 33, 187; Recent Social Trends, vol. I, pp. 305, 713, 730-3 1, ~ r ittee, Comm oes Resour al Nation ; 81~11 2, pp. 777-79 , Trends, 194-97 ; Ewan Clague and W. J. Couper, '!he Readj\lltmflnt of Worke rs Displa ced by Plant Shutdo wns,- QJE, 45 (Feb. 19:)1). 3 26 ; lsador Lubin, The ANorp tion of eM VMM~ bw A~ Indust ry (Wash ington : Brookings, 19&9), 18; -Age Limits in In39; dustry in Maryla nd and Califo rnia: lILR, 3S (Feb. 1931), 10 Senate, t.hor, _ tion EducG on ittee Comm Hearin gs befOf'B xv. 9), (19S~S Cong., 2 sess. ... 7· Lynds, MicldJetown, 48, 68; Herman Feldman. RacW foctort GreenAmeric an Indust ry (New York: Harper, 1931), ch. 8; John cI way, American FolIcJonga of Prot_ (Philadelphia: Univentty Pennsylvania Press, 1953), 113. 8. Hugh Grant Adam, An A.",. ..,. Loob tJf A".. . (Londo n: AI1fIn ons and Unwin , 19S8), 23, 80; "'British Report on Induatrial Conditi Noune C. Edwin ngg; lQ111), (June 24 in the United States. " MLR, and AslOCiates, A...mc a', CGJ)tIdty to Produce (Wuhington: Brookings, 1934), 416; Weintr aub, -Unem ployme nt,- 10: R~ Ec0nomic CMtagBI, vol. S, pp. 489-78, 876; "Unetnployment SUI'Yef 01 Philadelphia," !dU, 30 (Feb. 1930), 881; Fred C. Croxton and Fredericlc E. Croxton, -Unemployment In BulaIo, N.Y., in 1929 ... ," MLR, 30 (Feb. 1930), -36; Lynda, lI~. 56-!9; Clague and Coupei', -S~t of Worbn,"~; Robert J. Myen, "'Ocx:upational R..tfultnaent of DtIpIaced SkdW WOikaoen.," IPE, 37 (Aug. 19s9), 413-89; Cliueh c.JIdnI, SotM ,oIJrI Wont Work (New York: Harcourt, BI1ICl8, 1930), 1&-.0; SendI H...,. ..,. f4. Recent SocitIl TnmdI, vol. 1, p. 30et vol. _. p. W. JWOIM M~, 387-&; George KonoD, eM Dull OR eM ,1tIdM (Pbiladelplrla: Unfwn fty of PeansylYanIa rr-, 1943), 141....... 9- ElDabeth Faull:ner Baker, DfapIece...... of M8ft bv "'. . . (New J..... ",... .,.. Yed: Columbia UDMn tty ....... 1935), .. tfon, 393 I.; W. S, WoytiDIky. nn. AIptd I of ,..." ..... ...-:J3; 114&), I. J I rcIa 0JuDat (Wash mgtoD : SocaI Sdenc e

as'.;

a

SIJcIar, -can -t LUor Pol' ' ;• .....-a1•

NOTES FOR PAGES

62-70

Lynds, Middletown, 63; Calkins, Some Folh, 20-21; on the abortive Swarthmore project there is an extensive correspondence between Brandeis and Cooke and Douglas and Cooke, dealing mainly with raising money and convincing Douglas to leave the University of Chicago, Cooke Papers; Senate Hearings, vii-xv. 11. Leven, et al., America's Capacity, 54-56, 93, 103-4; "Cost of Living of Federal Employees in Five Cities," MLR, 29 (Aug. 1929), 3 1 5; Paul H. Douglas, Wages and the Family (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925), 5-6; Steffens to Jo Davidson, Feb. 18, 1929, in Letters of Lincoln Steffens, Ella Winter and Granville Hicks, eds. (N ew York: Harcourt, Brace, 1938), vol. 2, p. 830; Paul H. Douglas, Real Wages in the United States, 1890-1926 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930), 391; Paul H. Douglas and Florence Tye Jennison, The Movement of Money and Real Earnings in the United States, 1926-28 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930), 27. Wages in 1929 differed little from 1928 figures. Annual earnings in manufacturing rose to $1341 in 1929 from $1325 in 1928. Since the cost of living also advanced, by one point, real wages rose by a fraction of 1 per cent. Paul H. Douglas and Charles J. Cae, "Earnings," American Journal of Sociology, 35 (May, 1930), 935-39; Recent Economic Changes, vol. 1, pp. 60-67, 325; Recent Social Trends, vol. 2, pp. 827, 858-89, 915-26; Siegfried, America Comes of Age, 159· See also Dally Mall, 23. Some of the British made the admission more cautiously, while an Australian stated Batly that real wages were higher in his country. Report of the Delegation Appointed to Study Industrial Conditions In . . . the United States, Cmd. 2833 (Mar. 1927), 33; Adam, An Australian, 46. l~. Adam, An Australian, 37; Douglas, Real Wages, 96, 101, 135, 15 2, 189-90, ~05-11; Douglas and Jennison, Movement of Money, 36 , 38, 177, 179; NICB, Wages in the United States, 1914-1929 (New York: NICB, 1930), 36, 3g-4~; Historical Statistics, 68-70; United States Steel Corporation, Annual Report, 1955, 30; Butler, Industrial Relations, 14, ~5; Allan Nevins and F. E. Hill, Ford: Expansion and Challenge, 1915-1933 (New York: Scribner, 1957), 330; A. F. Hinrichs, "Historical Review of Wage Rates and Wage Differentials in the Cotton-Textile Industry," MLR, 40 (May }(~35), 1173; Abraham Berglund, George T. Starnes, and Frank T. DeVyver, Labor in the IndtJStrlid South (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1930 ), 74; Recent Economic Chan~es, vol. ~, pp. 437-39; BLS, Bull. No. 513, Wages and Houn of Labor In the Iron and Steellndustf'f}, 19 2 9 (1930), 35. 37, 91, 9~; BLS. No. 52~, Wages and Hours of Labor In Foundries and Machine Shops, 1929 (193°),2-3; BLS, No. 526 , Wage, and Hours of Labor In the Fumitu.,e Industry, 1910 to 192 9 (1931). ~, 3; BLS, No. 535. Wap:es tmd Hours of Labor m the Slau~hterlng and Meat-pnc1dn!( lniluBtry, 1929 (1931), 5. 6, 11-12, 14-15, ~~~3, ~9; BLS. No. 532, Wage, and Hoo" of Labor 4ft the 10.

NOTI:S POB PACI:s

?0-80

SIS

CigtJf'ette MGNSfactwiftg l~. 19.)0 (1~1), a; BLS. Ne. Wage& and HOUf'I of ~ ... CoCfoIt.Coodt 1tI--t-'C.... 191 0 " 1930 (1~31). 4,5 .. 7;. Parliameot of ... Australia. ~, 41; KaroW

sa

13·

14·

M. Levmson, Umonann, Wage TPMda, MId ltIiCNW l>Ut-;A: t' 19.1 4- 1 947 (~ Arbor: University of Micbipa Pre.. 195 1 ), ~ Mills, EconotnlC Tendertcies. 477. NICB, Wages . .. 1914-1929, SOl; Butler. 'ftIllu.Jlrial R~. 31; Douglas, Real Wages, 590; Kuzneb. N~ l~. 331-:\3. 3~-53; U.S. Ste:el Corp., Annual Report, 1955. 3-3\; Ch.arW p, Taft, 2d. to Martm Egan, June 7, 1934, Record Group No.• ~ NatioMl Archives; Mills, Economk Tendertcia, 404. Douglas, Real Wages, Ilia-IS. 208; Solomon Fabricant, 1""*"",",, in Manufacturing. 1899-1939 (New York: Nat:iooal Bureau 01 Eronomic Research, 19iew, 8 (Jan. 1955), 197; C~ .. dw Cool Fields of Pennsylooni4. West Vir~ ...d O~, Hearinp c.

S. Res. 105, Senate Committee on Interstate Comtnef'{'e, 70 4 1 4; judicial appointments.. 403-410~ 412; and unemployment strations, 431-4JSi and

Bonus

4~i relief 460-46~ ~73i

Army, 448, 450,

polic~

456! on work-shannl, 479. ..al; _ unemployment insurance, 508; In 1~ election, 508-511; at R0osevelt inauguration, 513 Hoover, Mn. Herbert., 331-33A Hopkins, Harry L., 457-458 Homer, Henry, 376 Hosiery Workers American Fedention of Full-Fashioned, 30. 100, 150, 33~336, 344, ..a3. 5 11 Hotel and RestaurllDt Employes Union, 85, 336, 34&, 345 Hours of work:: in teUile iDdUltry, ~ 10; in United States. 11-1&,

under welfue capitalism.

.eo;

180-181;

regulation of, 223-&&5; in _ 1Ildustry, 361; reduction in, 4"""71:;

411.-4 81 i · ...... work-sharing, thirty-hour-Week bill. 48.......... Howard, Charles, 350. 478•

..a-

Howat, Alex, 121, 1~133. ~1. Huber. Henry 499 Huddleston, r..;ne, 3 11 Hughes, CharT~-Eva.DI, 100, 403-406 512 Hughes, ~ Evan.. Jr .. 404 Hughes, FOK. 314 Hulhes. Thorn.., ~Q1-~ .~ ...

.n. . .

Human relatioDs pb!}011 • 1...,-1"" Hunger...-cb, FOrd Motor Co.. 438434

Hang. march natioDa1, ~ H~ ~ Eyre. ase, •

.,,,,,3.

, 303. 30&. 355

Hur Y. pli:rlCk, 450 Hunt, FIDDie, 13i.4 HuttDelon. DaaW 0nIc:k. logo-no Bllm.......

J" c..

Jr..

S18

570

INDEX

Jones, Weimar, 41 Jones, Wesley L., 270 Josephson, Leon, 25 Jurisdictional disputes within AFL, 115-117 Kaplan, Sam, 340-341 Kazin, Alfred, 331 Keating, William, 423-424 Keeney, Frank, 382-385 Kellogg Co., 477 Kelly, Clyde, 432 Kennedy, Thomas, 351, 402-403 Kent, Frank R., 405 Kenyon, William S., 270 Kerchen, John, 105-106 Kerwin, Hugh L., 220-221 King, W. L. Mackenzie, 147, 159162, 166, 168, 221 Kirby, James, III Klein, Julius, 355 Korson, George, 361 Krafft, Fred A., 307, 309 Kulp, C. A., 493 Kuznets, Simon, 54, 71 Labor banking, 338; and insurance, 103-1 0 4 Labor force: migration ( fann to city), 47-50; Negroes in, 49, 58; immigration, 50-52; shift to whitecollar work, 55; women in, 55-56; child labor, 56-57; older workers, Latr market: in 1920'S, 57-58; minorities in, 58, 318; Wagner employment exchanges hill, 274-275; in depression, 318-319. See also Employment exchanges Labor s social outlook, and social classes, 80-82 Ladies' Gannent Workers, International, 62-63, 85, 86, 99, 137-138, 2 64, 335, 3~6-337, 489 La Follette, Philip F., 411, 459, 499500, 501 La Follette, Robert M., Sr., 78, 104, 242 La Follette, Robert M., Jr., 266; criticism of Hoover Administration, 257; in hearings, 331; on Hughes nomination to Supreme Court, 405; on relief polJcies, 460-46 1, 4644 6 5, 473 La Follette Committee, 150. 152 La Follette-Costigan relief bill, 464-

4 65

La Guardia, Fiorello H., 272, 279280, 413, 427-428 Lamont, Corliss, 233 Lamont, Robert, 257, 314, 355, 356357 Larson, Morgan F., 493 Latimer, Murray W., 182, 476. 48 5-

486

Lauck, W. Jett, 3 0 3 LafJf v. E. G. Shinner & Co., 4 1 4-

41 5

Lawson, John R., 100, 157 League for Industrial Democracy, 426 League for Industrial Rights, 396 Lee. Porter R., 303. 308 Leeds, Morris E .• 101. 280. 49 1 Leeds & Northrup, 62, 101 Legge, Alexander. 355 Legislation, labor. See Black thirtyhour-week bill; Employment, stabilization of; Employment exchanges; Employment statistics; Hours of work; Minimum-wage movem~nt; Norris-La Guardia Anti-Injunction Act; Railway Labor Act; Unemployment relief; Wagner-Gamer bill Lehman, Herbert H., 18- 1 9, 74. 85, 100, 337, 495 Leiserson, William M., 74. 142. 170, 173- 174, 175, 187, 206. 352, 475; on unemployment insurance, 491, 493, 495. 496-497. 5 01 , 503 Leiserson Commission. See Ohio Commission on Unemployment Insurance Leitch, John, 160 LeU, C. M., 26 Lescohier, D. D., 278, 282 Leslie, H. G., 385 Leven, Maurice, 483 Levin, Emanuel, 446 Levinson, H. M., 320 Levy, M. P., 361 Lewis, John L., 94, g6, 97, 104. 106, log, 117, 201, 250, 252; profile of. 117 ff.; union wage policies, 314, 344; suggested for Secretary of Labor, 334; endorses unemflOY. ment insurance, 351; proposa for conference with operators, 3563S7; internal UMW disputes, 3~ 377, 382, 388-38g; and injunctions, 396, 408-4og; and 1932 election, 511 Lewis, Sinclair, 2, 7, 9, 29, 31 Lewis, Thomas. 117-118 Lewis, Willmott, 249

Lewisobn, Sa. A., l45. \74

Lieb, John W., 54 LiIieothal, Davi