Carolina Tragedy

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30901, 6 November 1965, Page 5

Carolina Tragedy

[Specially written [or “The

Press” by

DERRICK ROONEY.]

’Twas in Marion, North Carolina, In a little mountain town; Six workers at the textile mill. In cold blood were shot down. There'll be no sorrow there. There'll be no sorrow there. In heaven above. There'll be no sorrow there. In literary quality the songs of the American Labour movement are not much compared with the elegant Child ballads of England and Scotland; but in terms of human suffering and anguish each is worth 100 volumes of Child. The passage quoted above is from

a song that came out the textile mill troubles in Marion, North Carolina, in 1929. In chronology, the troubles went like this:

January, 1929: The Marion Manufacturing Company had assets of 1.7 million dollars and was preparing to pay a dividend of 11.50 dollars on each share of ordinary stock. At the same time its 700 workers were getting on an average of 11 dollars for a 70-hour week and some were getting less than five. April, 1929: Three young workers visited Alfred Hoffman, the Southern organiser for the United Textile Workers’ Union, in the nearby town of Elizabethton. He sketched a plan for them to unionise the Marion mill and, after they had done the preliminary work, took charge. July 10, 1929: The new union presented a petition to the mill president, R. W. Baldwin, seeking a reduction to 10 hours in the mill shifts. Baldwin refused. July 11: The union struck. September, 1929: The strike collapsed, but not before Baldwin, in conciliation with a board set up by Governor Gardner of North Carolina, had agreed to reduce the weekly hours to 55. The agreement also permitted Baldwin to reduce wages and to sack 14 union leaders. After the union returned Baldwin ignored these concessions and sacked 102 union members. Unrest spread in the plant and on October 1 Baldwin alerted Sheriff O. F. Adkins to assemble his deputies. The deputies, recruited from among local toughs, moved into the plant that night and threatened to shoot the workers if they dared leave their jobs. At 1.30 a.m. a young worker retaliated to their threats and