UNDER THE NEW DEAL

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 51, 29 August 1934, Page 9

UNDER THE NEW DEAL

HUGE STRIKE THREATENED

WORKERS IN COTTON TRADE

AVASHINGTON, August 27. Faced with the largest industrial strike, either actual or threatened under tho New Deal, officials of the National Labour Belations Board started a series of last-minuto negotiations today in an effort to prevent the scheduled walk-out of between 750,000 and 1,000,000 textile workers on Saturday. - Only cotton workers have definitely been ordered to strike, but silk, woolJen, and rayon workers are expected to follow almost immediately. The unions are demanding a complete revision of the N.B.A. code, granting fewer hours of work and higher wages, while operators insist that, with raw cotton prices higher and sales in slump, the demands cannot be met.

The centres of industry are concenr trated along the Atlantic seaboard from. Massachusetts to Alabama. One of tho unusual features of the controversy is the attitude of union leaders, who believe that the strike can bo won through an extension' of Government unemployment relief to strikers to compensate them for loss of wages. They admit that, with less than 1,000,000 dollars 'in their treasury, tho strike cannot last long unless the Government aids strikers and their families, aggregating some 3,000,000 persons. Belief administrators say they are bound to extend aid to all destitute persons, arid will do so unless tho Department of Labour declares the strike "unreasonable."

The possibility of violence is foreseen as the unions havo alleged that millownors in Alabama and elsewhere are accumulating machine-guns and other weapons. .