National Reports:
FISZMAN, JOSEPH R. & CARMICHAEL, JOHN
National Report Labor-Baiting Increases in the South By John Carmichael NEW ORLEANS THE SOUTH, which has always done everything it could to prevent the growth of organized labor, appears to be...
...On Ponce de Leon Avenue, in this city, preachers are appearing and calling for a return to the "Southern and Christian way of life" and the glory of white supremacy...
...The election was set by the NLRB after a petition by the owners of the mills to decertify the two unions...
...Telephones rang in Swainsboro and in the general stores and on the farms of Marion County...
...After McGehee refused to match the wages and working conditions won by the unions in similar mills, Federal and state mediators were called into the dispute...
...He believes, he said, that God will answer the prayer for relief from the drought if Georgians pray "with faith, repentance, sincerity, fervency and in the name of Christ...
...Ballots were given only to strikebreakers and "scabs...
...These same elements were responsible for the popular majority given to incumbent Congressman James C. Davis, who ran against the strong opposition of liberal Democrat Morris Abram...
...Formation of trade unions has never been easy in the South, but the fanatical attack that the McGehee management made on these two unions has not been common in recent years...
...National Report Labor-Baiting Increases in the South By John Carmichael NEW ORLEANS THE SOUTH, which has always done everything it could to prevent the growth of organized labor, appears to be redoubling its efforts in this direction—particularly now that it is attracting Northern industry...
...They believe that management has been encouraged by the anti-union political atmosphere and by other favorable circumstances from their standpoint, such as unemployment...
...State and county police and plant agents patrolled a 30-mile gas line through the Calcasieu River swampland which was blasted with dynamite fifty times...
...Ironically, the strikers, numbering over 600 when the dispute started, were outside the plants when the NLRB conducted the election...
...forests are burning, crops have been ruined in the fields, hay is scorched, and the lovely dogwood trees, which bloom in the spring, are desiccated and probably will not bloom next year...
...Since the primaries, he has made news by advising Washington, D.C...
...He himself prayed...
...This dispute, when viewed together with a year-long struggle by the CIO strikers in Port Arthur, Texas and a seven-month-old strike by the CIO Amalgamated Clothing Workers in New Orleans, has made it evident to labor leaders in this area that employers are getting tougher at the bargaining table...
...Law-enforcement officials recorded 180 "acts of violence...
...The Federal mediator finally left in disgust when the company placed insurmountable obstacles in his path...
...The ambiguously-worded amendment says nothing about private schools and speaks only of better education in the traditional Georgia spirit, but the people understand its implications...
...The Governor's office was calling: "Switch your votes to Marvin Griffin...
...Picket shacks were burned to the ground...
...Union men carried shotguns as they stood picket duty...
...They were not allowed to vote...
...On the ballot in this election is a proposed Fourth Constitutional Amendment for Georgia...
...There are also those who oppose the "private school" plan on moral or principled grounds because they feel it will lead to corruption and degeneration...
...Also significant in the Elizabeth strike was the pattern of strife...
...Paul L. Phillips, President of the AFL International Brotherhood of Papermakers, and John E. Burke, President of the AFL International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers, issued a joint statement calling off the strike at the plants, the Calcasieu Paper Co...
...For three months, most of Georgia has been without rain...
...then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin...
...Both properties are under the absentee ownership of C. G. McGehee Sr., of Jacksonville, Florida...
...And, in the small West Manor Baptist Church, the reverend read a verse from II Chronicles: "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray...
...One of the segregation champions, the influential Roy Harris, wrote the following in his Augusta Courier in support of Georgia's 50-year-old public-school system and against the Fourth Amendment: "Shut down all schools in any county where the schools are mixed...
...One strikebreaker was arrested with a submachine-gun...
...Many segregation adherents, too, are not convinced that "private schools" are really the solution to the problem...
...high-school students to stay away from classes and picket de-segregated schools...
...Surprisingly enough, many former Griffin supporters are now intimating in private that, if forced to make a decision, they would choose de-segregated schools over "private schools...
...Much more important, however, is the opposition of those who are traditionally avowed proponents of segregation...
...This became increasingly apparent during the recent unsuccessful strikes at two paper mills in Elizabeth, Louisiana...
...Bitter strikers tore down their picket shacks on September 30 after a two-year struggle for a union contract...
...In a sense, this strike might be labeled a case history of unionism under Taft-Hartley, particularly since the labor law is being policed by the pro-management Eisenhower Administration...
...Many of these people do not want to lose Federal support for schools, particularly since Georgia receives special school-construction grants in areas where the growing school population is a result of new Federal installations...
...Both organizations had won bargaining rights in an election conducted in early 1952...
...All this was done under the legal provisions of the Taft-Hartley Law, which prohibits strikers from voting in elections of this kind...
...A. P. Harvey, state mediator, reviewed the dispute and made a recommendation for settlement which both unions accepted but which McGehee rejected with scornful blasts at the conciliator...
...Both sides obviously engaged in the warfare...
...No end is so important that it justifies the use of any means...
...A pamphlet issued by the Georgia League of Women Voters, which has not yet taken an official stand on segregation, says: "Giving up our system of public education to keep segregation in schools would be like giving up democracy to keep Communism out of democracy...
...The weather and drought here have not in any way eased the heat and emotion of the people...
...The strike leaders say that he rarely visits the town, whose economic destiny he controls through ownership of the mills, and has created the harshest aspects of "absentee ownership...
...The end of the strike came swiftly two days after a National Labor Relations Board election which two American Federation of Labor unions, representing the strikers, lost by a vote of 673-18...
...See "National Reports," June 21.] Davis was endorsed by the most reactionary Congressmen outside of Georgia in both parties...
...and Southern Industries Inc...
...Georgia Ponders 'Private School' Plan By Joseph R. Fiszman ATLANTA A FEW DAYS after Georgia's primaries, the Southern Bell Telephone Company announced a record for long-distance calls originating from Atlanta in a single day—the day before the primaries...
...The Florida businessman, the AFL unions charge, followed tactics here which had crushed other unions on two previous occasions in this state and in Florida...
...They point to Texas and North Carolina, where private schools were the first to abide by the Supreme Court decision...
...and will heal their land...
...And, in this hot, charged atmosphere, new Klan groups are rising and burning crosses along the hills...
...Dozens of towns and villages are without water and have to receive aid from neighboring Army posts and Civil Defense units, which pipe in water from distant lakes and creeks...
...The company advised the non-union employes who replaced the strikers to arm themselves, and pistol-packing company guards swarmed over the plant area...
...But union spokesmen point out that there was no record of violence of any sort until the company started bringing in people from outside Elizabeth about a month after the strike started...
...When the schools are shut down for 24 hours, the white people will rise up in a towering rage which will force the Negroes and the whites to maintain segregation...
...Thus, in a primary marked by emotion, ignorance and intimidation, Herman Talmadge's lieutenant got the nod for Governor with less than 50 per cent of the voters participating...
...On Sunday, October 10, Governor Talmadge proclaimed a day of prayer for rain and relief...
...Of course, teachers' representatives, school superintendents and university spokesmen are professionally interested in maintaining the public system...
...They also blast the politicians, "Romanists," Jews and, of course, "niggers...
...If Elizabeth is the beginning of a pattern for labor relations in the South which will bring back the bloody days of the 1920s and early 1930s, if this is an example of a new tough policy by management, and if it is an indication of the protection that workers will receive under the present national administration, then trade unions are in for a tough battle...
...and seek my face, and turn away from their wicked ways...
...Now that the primaries are over, however, interest centers on the public-vs.-"private"-school controversy...
...This, he maintains, will also keep the schools public...
Vol. 37 • November 1954 • No. 44
