ELIZABETHTON RAYON WORKERS TIE UP TWO BIG PLANTS AGAIN WHEN FIRM BREAKS AGREEMENT
Elizabethton Rayon Workers Tie Up Two Big Plants-Again When Firm Breaks Agreement 5,000 Men and Women Are Out—U. S. Conciliator Exposed as Helping Employers—Labor Spies Activity...
...Henry Linville, presidmt of the Teachers Union, the Institute will take up "Crime and Political Affiances," to show the connection between the lawless elements and the political machine which has to shield them in return for the services they render the machine on various occasions, mainly on election day...
...They left the farm with all the primitive American virtues and faults, creatures of the eighteenth and nineteenth century American mountain and hill frontier, independent, patient under difficulties and fiery when aroused...
...Casey of the state Federation a Plnkerton salesman took the floor and announced that he was one detective who had never used a number or a code letter to conceal his identity...
...Abolition of all forms-'bt'summary "justice...
...Louis P. Goldberg will speak on the extra legal methods employed by the police under Commissioner Whiten...
...The industry itself has become demoralized while the long period of internal struggle with the Communists left the union in ltd shape...
...Which is ccrrect...
...The measure, introduced by the State Federation of Labor, would compel all under cover operatives to be registered and bonded by the state...
...The latter has been •eUte since the early days of struggle to build a strong union in the industry Pioneer Youth Theatre Party To Top Off May Day Festivities Workers and Socialists who take their May Day seriously have Pioneer Tooth to thank for arranging as a tunic relief to the day's program, a theatre party to the "Kibitzer," ehUckle-evolving comedy par excellence...
...Tie discussion will be attended by Socialist party officials, public speakers, dadents of municipal problems general, and by all who will want to have toe facts necessary to enter a campaign to fight Tammany Hall in the coming municipal elections...
...The Bristol paper broke the agreement to keep silence, and after one day of suppression of the story the other papers began to report the fight...
...They are still working the same hours for the same money, and the speedup still goes on...
...As no textile union has an organizer on the ground, Earl White of the Full Fashioned Hosiery Workers, who gave Federated Press the above information, offered his services to the strikers...
...As a result of this former leadership snd the demoralization of the industry the sweat shop has returned in many swss and the union is determined to wipe out this old abomination...
...Report's Are Edited "One of the reasons," U-S tell his dick-employe, "why no written reports should go to the clients is that doing so would prevent my editing the reports and whipping them into such shape that they will be presentable and up to the general standard of.work.'1 A more important reason, not mentioned, is that the central spy office, by editing, is able to improve the reports to such an extent that "clients" are scared stiff by highly colored improvisations on the field reports...
...Harry Leidler, secretary of the League for Industrial Democracy will discuss the transit situation...
...Many of them wiB sweate a great deal of publicity for tha party and attract votes if they are given some attention by...
...The telephone number is Main 3265...
...Union men in control of the city employment office...
...Sidney Yellen and Clarence Senior...
...There are dozens of broad silk and ribbon mills in Allentown...
...In Alabama they worked an average of over nine hours a day...
...Roger N. Baldwin, chairman, will preside...
...Charging gross violation of the strike settlement agreement made March 22, 5,000 rayon workers in the plants of the American Glanzstoff and American Bemberg corporations have again walked out spontaneously...
...v Pioneer Youth, for^bose camp and •tab work the benefit is being held has' reserved all the seats at the Boyale Theatre for this performance, which Wl cornmemerate the Fifth Anniverof the founding of the Pioneer Youth Movement...
...City life drew many...
...Brfinnlng with a discussion on education, to be led by Jessie Wallace naghan and Dr...
...I have seen street car men's unions in the anthracite regions forced to strike merely because some parasitical strikebreaking agency was able to sell a traction magnate their services, and all possibility of establishing decent relations between men and management were completely wiped out...
...According to Moser's informant, girls are mnning six looms at the Adelaide for less money than they received elsewhere for ninning three and four...
...The party will appeal to the people with the following program: PUBIC UTILITIES: United publiclyowned transportation system, to be managed by a joint board representing technicians, employes, and the public...
...His branch of the historic family was only recently located by John Trotwood Moore...
...Tennessee slate librarian, historian, and archivist...
...Full protection of the right of workers to organize in labor unions and bargain collectively...
...Despite the efforts of the chairman of the committee to squelch him "Jim" Maurer arose as the Plnkerton man sat down, and charged him with seeking to keep a cloak of secrecy about all crooked stool pigeons, provocateurs, and shady characters doing union-breaking, while forcing trade unionists at all times to conduct their activities in the full light of day...
...I want you to make good on this job and you cannot make good spending money like a drunken sailor...
...Much Unrest in Allentotcn, Pa...
...The Adelaide firm, which owns two mills here and is one of the largest silk plants in town, is said to be the only shop where the 6-loom system prevails...
...Cleveland Socialists' Demands Operative Q-511 particularly is warned of discharge by his boss, U-S, whose letters bear the notation BIR-5...
...The southern mill hands' are native southerners come from the farms in the hills and the brush to enter the mills and live in the mill villages...
...Full police protection for peaceful picketing during strikes...
...They handled little money in the course of a year and what they had was precious beyond its usual worth...
...He orders 2 subs and instructs us to torn over the extra dollar to the WE YD radio station...
...Public birth control clinics giving advice to all who request it...
...There was no mill village, and hence the local real estate ring was gouging the workers to the extent of $35 or $40 a month for a small mill-type house...
...The men made an average of $14.58 a week and the women $11.88...
...S. Conciliator Exposed as Helping Employers—Labor Spies Activity Unearthed—Allentown Silk Workers Restive —Penn...
...Certain changes have occurred in production...
...Q-511, whose handwriting is so bad as to be nearly illegible, is giving his boss short measure, U-S complains...
...I do not think," he writes, "that you can sell many washing machines at the current prices to a lot of people making $8 or $10 a week...
...The Present negotiations are intended to re°o*er some of the favorable conditions which the .Communists bartered away in the settlement three years ago...
...More serious was the double-crossing apparent in Q-511's bad habit of sending his reports directly to the "client," the Bemberg or Glanzstoff firms...
...Plnkerton Man SpeakaAfter Maurer spoke on behalf of Pres...
...Q-511's dodge for getting access into workers' homes, that of selling washing machines, isn't so hot either, his boss informs him...
...FP...
...P.)—Featured by a sharp passage of arms between a Plnkerton detective and James H. Maurer, former president of thePennsylvania Federation of Labor, the hearing on the bill to license private detectives in the lower chamber of the state legislature developed into one of the most Interesting public oxposures of the American labor spy system in several years...
...Secretary Thomas J. Kennedy of the United Mine Workers, Secretary William Smith and Research Director John W. Edelman of the Full-Fashioned Hosiery Workers, and Maurer, now a Reading city councilman, made speeches favoring the bill...
...In South Carolina their hours were still a little more than nine hours a day and their average was $15.46 for men and $12.32 for women—more than in Alabama but a little less than in Georgia or in North Carolina...
...The federal bureau of labor statistics gave the bare facts of the hours thmy work and the wage they get in its study of cotton mills last year...
...According to a staff man from a newspaper here, Wood induced the Elizabethton Star, the Bristol Herald-Courier and the Johnson City Chronicle and Johnson City Stafi-News to agree to suppress all mention of the strike in the Glanzstoff rayon plant in Elizabethton, on the day the walkout occurred...
...Va„ I understand comes from Bluefield, W. Va...
...Housing will be discussed by William Kariln, former Socialist assemblyman, William M. Feigenbaum, and a number of others who have been invited to present their views...
...McAllister Coleman, Socialist candidate for United States Senator last year, will speak on "Politics and Crime...
...At the time Wood was, according to local testimony, urging the editors to say nothing of the walkout, the strikers were.showing that their basic wage was $8.96 a week, and that they had been promised a wage of $10.08, which was paid in the Bemberg artificial silk mills...
...Employment of union members on all city work...
...Cole, of the Locomotive Firemen, who you state hails from Roanoke...
...The policeman came over and gruffly Inquired: "What are you trying to do— agitate here...
...Cop Bans Organizer pLESABETHTON, Term...
...They are old-time Americans and they have lived for a century in the backwaters of American life...
...He and other union leaders assert that they did not order the new strike, but that the workers themselves put it in effect because the big rayon corporations have continually broken their agreement that union members could work in their plants on the same terms as others...
...I'm an A P. of L. organizer...
...More than 100 workers have walked sat at the Temple shop and the SMS shop, protesting a wage cut of %c...
...Municipal gas distribution...
...Representation of the employes on all city-owned ultilities...
...ALLENTOWN, Pa...
...The shift is nine hours...
...While he was speaking with a group on the sidewalk in front of the plant, the superintendent pointed him out to a city cop...
...He faded out of the picture...
...Wood was familiar with these conditions...
...He knew that in America the law must not interfere with business, or with any legitimate business man making money...
...On their farms they had grown nearly everything they needed: a small moneycrop had given them the chance to buy a few things from the store...
...made a similar bad record in Elizabethton...
...Recent events may tell of a change...
...Fifty workers recently struck in the Allentown Silk Co.'s spinning department, where girl minors operate hazardous spinning and throwing machinery for as little as 15c...
...Again two companies of the Tennessee National Guard have been rushed to Elizabethton, where they are guarding the plants of the rayon syndicate...
...HEALTH: Expansion of all health facilities, including more hospitals, especially maternity stations...
...Office is Opened An office has been opened at 310 Superior Building, and someone will be in the office in the afternoons to give local comrades literature and information...
...Old age, sickness, and accident insurance for all city employes...
...B. C. Tladeck, former Socialist Alderman, will present a comparative statement of the budgets of 1919 and 1929 to show how the cost of city government is increasing while its problems remain unsolved...
...Tammany afflceOoilOT have taken to solve it...
...Discover Labor Spies Busy Labor spies on the job among Glanzstoff and Bemberg union -workers and officials show a disconcerting tendency to doublecross their employers, according to confidential reports which have fallen into the hands of Hoffman, hosiery workers organizer...
...City Attairs Institute Next Week lb* York Socialists Will Analyze Municipal Problems at 2-Day Session rpAMMANY'S administration of munic* jptl affairs will be subjected to a mjjnjgcopic analysis next Saturday and gandaj, April 27 and 28, when the Municipal Affairs Institute, arranged by the jt-nrf school and the Socialist party, will fT*r tip at six successive sessions each jagjorunt municipal problem and determine what steps, if any...
...That's my busS ness...
...The weekly hours in each plant were 56...
...He denounced the bill as a means of protection for crooks in industrial establishments...
...Watch for the announcement of a full time organizer and for the big picnic the party is planning for next month...
...Whil...
...Lee tore ma India Mrs...
...Sarojini Naidu, former president of the India National Conference, will speak at a luncheon meeting at the Civic Club, 18 East 10th street, on Tuesday, April 16, at one o'clock on "Political persecution in India," under the auspices of the International Committee for Political Prisoners...
...yard handed weavers...
...B. C. Vladeck will sp.'ak between the -acts...
...In addition to party workers, copies of flic program are being mailed to various civic organizations whose membership are considered to be especially interested in a study of the way in which municipal problems are now being handled under Walker's regime...
...SOCIA WELFARE: An adequate public social welfare program, tax-supported, to replace the private "community" fund Low cost, sanitary housing for congested districts, through the use of powers of eminent domain and encouragement of genuine housing cooperatives...
...Bosses, he said, were often victimized by under-cover men, who actually blackmail some executives in order to keep their jobs...
...Loir Wages, Speed-up Behind Textile Revolt WASHINGTON, D. C—Back of the new labor troubles in the southern textile mills, which have been marked by strikes of the unorganized, attempts at organization and indictments for kidnapping labor officials, is a story of low wages, long hours and fast machine work among a people new to industrial life and fresh from the typical early American farm of the hills...
...Copies of the program can be obtained by writing the Rand School, 7 East loth street...
...Eight hour day and five day week for all city employes...
...Benjamin Schlesinger, President, is •Offering from ill health and David DuWosky, manager of Local 10 of the Cut•*•»> is for the present acting in the J>l»ce of Schlesinger...
...CrVTL LIBERTIES: Removal of police restrictions on freedom of speech...
...Comprehensive Platform Stresses Six Problems —Headquarters Are Opened (Bt a New Leader Ctrmmtni) /CLEVELAND.—In contrast to the vapid platforms of the old parties, the Cleveland Socialists will run this fall, backing an outspoken series of demands...
...In recent years and months the new machines and the efficiency experts have set them to faster, harder tasks...
...15 Weekly Is Average A nine hour day, an average wage of men by states from something less than $15.00, a week to something less than $18.00, and an average wage of women by states from something less than $12.00 a week to something less than $15.00 are the main lines of this part of their working life...
...Defense by all public agencies Df racial minorities in the enjoyment of all their rights...
...Tennessee Scion Backs Rayon Strikers HOUSTON, Tex.—(FP)—"I feel deeply that the workers of Elizabethton and vicinity did the right and noble thing in striking...
...U-S asks...
...From four machines with 30 spindles, workers were being switched over to six or seven machines, with as high as 1,440 spindles to tend...
...the membeis of the party and spread around...
...Spotlight Plays Havoc With Detectives -At Hearing HARRISBURG, Pa...
...Speedup was another grievance whicn directly provoked the strike...
...They were unorganized and on their farms in the hills they had had little experience with organizing...
...intimately the strike was settled, and the workers went back with nothing more definite than a bunch t>f promises...
...Much of Q-511's information evidently' doesn't tally with other information reaching his boss...
...The entire convention of the State Federation of Labor, then in session at Harrisburg, attended the hearing in the Capitol, filling a large section of the seats ordinarily occupied by legislators...
...As pioneers of a new industrialism in the south they should by all means demand and maintain the rights which they expect to hand on to future generations just as our ancestors fought for us...
...When before they worked long hours That cop was well trained...
...a in spells out in the open air and then bad time to loaf, now they work an average of nine boon a day steadily In heated lint—breathing air...
...He acted as temporary chairman at Monday afternoon's meeting...
...The old parties have the recent land scandals, in which four councllmen have been indicted, to live down...
...it is very much more important to "buddy around" with the union leaders, the officials of the local, of the emergency committee or strike committee to "get the real inside and advance information...
...The aeatton will be held at the People's House, f Cast 15th street...
...Louis Waldman and Dr...
...please...
...So commented Frederic Sevier, direct descendant of John Sevier, Tennessee's first governor, in an interview with Federated Press...
...an hour, and the highest wage paid is 39c an hour...
...Morris HUlquit and Norman Thomas will be among the speakers...
...Garment Workers Are Negotiating For New Contract The International Ladies Garment Workers Union^s engaged in negotiations to bring about improved conditions in the industry for the workers...
...As a parting instruction, the boss spy instructs Q-511 to "make It your business to get next to this chap Solamon from Johnson City...
...Hundreds of working women were marching around town, waving flags and calling for a fair wage while asking their fellow workers to leave the plant...
...In North Carolina they worked a few minutes less a day than in Georgia and made about a dollar and a half more a week...
...In Georgia they worked a little longer and they made an average of around a dollar a week more...
...Equal pay for equal work, irrespective of race or sex...
...So please cut it out...
...Strikers also charged that the mill superintendent refused them the use of tools and equipment needed in thenwork, and that he was aggressive in an offensive manner toward the girls...
...They entered a new kind of life to live in town on more money than they had ever before dreamed of handling but not with much more food and certaialy with less elbow room, less independence and with more of some comforts and fewer of others...
...The labor spy had been trying to run up heavy hotel bills on his firm, which may be either the Pinkertons or BaldwinFellz, both of which have been active in the rayon towns of eastern Tennessee since the big strike...
...Laldler will discuss municipal operation possibilities...
...Rotten working conditions in the silk mills of this city are reflected in a number of spontaneous strikes by unorganized workers within the last few weeks...
...U. S. Conciliator Fights Workers Charles Wood, personal protege of Calvin Coolidge, who violated his duty as federal conciliator in the textile strikes In Gastonia County, North Carolina, by calling the radical-led strikes a "revolution, not a strike movement...
...one elected by the civil service employes: and one elected by the people...
...They have themselves resisted organizing and the mill owners and local business men have played upon their prejudices to keep them from listening to the organizers who came among them...
...The disaster brought about by the Left Wing leadership in the strike three years ago has taught a lesson to the workers in the industry and it is now possible to rebuild the union...
...With the industrialization of the South they have left their clearings and patches and have gone to work in the factories...
...Separate sections will be analyzed and the reasons for their being included will be explained in subsequent issues of The NEW LEADER...
...Even there, says the letter, men don't run six looms, but girls, more easily intimidated, are forced to, and fear of losing, their jobs keeps the unorganized slaves silent...
...Protection of homes against arbitrary and indiscriminate raiding...
...Smoke and fume abatement...
...A general mass-meeting will be held on Sunday evening, April 28, to wind op the sessions...
...In the last couple of years a new tack has been taken though with little success...
...Abolition of racial segregation in the city hospital...
...At the end of a day's work they are scarcely able to drag themselves home, and some complain that the speedup will drive them mad if they don't get relief...
...Kennedy Tells of Coal Fields Thomas J. Kennedy of the Mine Work- i srs told how private detective agencies In Philadelphia and Pittsburgh send i men into the smallest mining hamlets all over the state, and how Pennsylvania employers are spending millions of dolbus a year on espionage for which the public must pay...
...CIVIL SERVICE: Rigid application of the merit system in the civil service...
...That being the case, and you have already once called at a house and were turned down on that proposition, it poes not leave a way for you to call back two or three- different, times on these selfsame DeoDle...
...They pay me to agitate here and I'm going to keep right on doing it as long as they pay me...
...More than 300 cases of discrimination by the rayon bosses against union workers have been reported to Organizer Alfred Hoffman, Hosiery workers field man, who is pinch-hitting for the United Textile Workers at Elizabethton...
...Wages week by week attracted them...
...PUBLIC WORK: Substitution of direct work under the city engineer for contract work in all municipal enterprises...
...The figures are similar to those in the rayon mills in which a part of the trouble has taken place...
...Waldman, who was the Socialist candidate for Governor last year, has written a number of books dealing with the transit problem...
...Editor Clarence Moser of the Pennsylvania Labor Herald, published at Allentown, has received a letter from a worker at the Adelaide Silk Mills, asking him to enlist organised labor in a fight to clean up conditions there...
...John Sevier, hero of the battle of King's Mountain, and founder of the rebellious free state of Frankland, is Tennessee's most popular historical figure...
...terms to expire at different times The platform was drafted by Comrade Anton Garden, Noah Mandelkom, former Socialist councilman, Joseph Martinek...
...True to his traditions, the young man is a member of the National Federation of Post Office Clerks, and has been president of his local union...
...Frederic Sevier, a young man of about 26, clean-cut and athletic, is employed as a clerk in the Houston postoffice...
...The labor spy must create trouble and stir up strife where none exists just so he can continue to have a Job," Secretary Kennedy said...
...Five dollars arrive from San Fran-* cisco, sent by M. Green...
...If be remains in town, you ought to cultivate him closely...
...Cop's Bluff Is Called "Yes," replied White...
...PP...
...The expansion of the present municipal light heat and power plant...
...Marketing also requires attention and stabilization is an important problem...
...PPQd seats are still available and be had by phoning the Pioneer Tooth, office, Stuyvesant 7885...
...is "all right to associate with the employes of the clients," Q-511 is told, "for what incidental information you may secure and what influence you may be able to exert over them to get them to return to work-, promptly...
...Civil service commission of three members to be chosen as follows: one by the city council...
...Maurer described the careers of many noted labor spies in the Pennsylvania labor movement, and said that some legal curb on these creatures was urgently needed to protect both employers and unions...
...August Claessens, teeretary of the Socialist party, is mafcing a drive to have every party worker present, so that the information brought to light during the discussions can be used effectively in their respective districts when the campaign gets under way...
...Now, there is absolutely no earthly reason for you to spend a lot of money on this operation," Q-511 is warned...
...A system of welllocated public comfort stations...
...Abolition of "thirddegree" methods in exacting confessions...
...The financial problems of the city will be discussed by a number of experts, among them Henry H. Klein, fanner Deputy Commissioner of Accounts, whose exposures of municipal corruption have created widespread interest, and Professor Joseph McOoldrick, of the School of Government, at Columbia University, who has agreed to discuss toe relationship between public finances and the invisible government...
...In the most barefaced manner this dick declared that the Plnkerton outfit never did a mean thing in its whole career...
...All are open shop...
...Municipal Construction of public works to relieve unemployment...
...t The Glanzstoff and Bemberg management has announced an indefinite shutdown of both plants, and has suspended new building programs...
Vol. 8 • April 1929 • No. 14
