The General Textile Strike of 1934: From Maine to Alabama

Abstract

In January 1933, United Textile Workers of America was in danger of collapse. Its membership was no larger than 15,000; its attempts to organize southern workers had failed disastrously; and it was constantly under attack from rival organizations. Yet, barely eighteen months later, with 300,000 dues-paying members, with newly established or revived branches covering southern cotton textile workers, as well as northern woolen and worsted workers, silk and jacquard weavers, dyers and finishers, even rayon workers, and with locals in 208 cities, towns, and mill villages, UTW was about to embark on what one historian has termed the greatest single industrial conflict in history of American labor. The General Textile Strike of 1934 is story of that conflict. The few historians who have concerned themselves at all with 1934 textile strike have all concentrated on its southern aspect, presenting it as a southern event, a cotton textile event. No one argues that South and cotton were not crucial to strike's story. It was cotton mill workers' anger over broken promises of National Industrial Recovery Act that had forced a reluctant UTW leadership into supporting a strike vote. No industry leader was more devious in his dealings with UTW leaders than George Sloan, chair of Cotton Code Authority and head of Cotton Textile Institute. Nevertheless, 1934 strike was a nationwide one, involving hundreds of thousands of silk, woolen, and rayon workers, all represented by UTW and mostly living in states outside South. Moreover, Peter Van Horn and Arthur Besse, head of Silk and Woolen Code Authorities, respectively, lost little to Sloan in their intransigence toward labor's demands. And, though great transfer of cotton industry from New England to South was almost complete, there were still little pockets left in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maine. In The General Textile Strike of 1934, John Salmond tells everyone's story. Looking at strike from a national and an industrywide perspective, Salmond explains why workers were willing to risk protesting and describes differences and similarities between southern and northern workers. Setting strike within a New Deal context and focusing on its impact on future of labor relations in industry and lives of those who participated in it, The General Textile Strike of 1934 fills an important gap in American labor history.