STRIKE FATALITIES

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 September 1934, Page 7

STRIKE FATALITIES

SERIES OF SKIRMISHES MORE MILLS CLOSED | [by cable— peesb assn.—copybight.] WASHINGTON, September 5. Rioting and death punctuated 1 the textile strike to-day, even as Capital and Labour prepared to lay their grievances before a Board of the President’s choosing. Two men were killed in a pitched battle at. Trion, in Georgia, in which 15 or more are reported to have been wounded. Three were shot at Augusta, in Georgia, one being critically wounded, and at Greenville, five strikers, four of them women, were wounded in a club-swinging melee at a mill’s gates. “The strike continues to roll on ahead,” said Mr Francis Gorman, the Chairman of the Textile Strike Committee. “A fresh hundred thousand strikers have been added as mill after mill has been closed. We have now fully 450,000 on strike. Mr Gorman’s figures are at variance with an Associated Press survey, which indicated that 325,000 are now striking, with the walk-out, however, rapidly spreading.

STRIKERS SHOT DEAD. (Received September 7, 10 a.m.) WASHINGTON, September 6. The death toll reached ten to-day and forty-one injured, as Union leaders sought to extend the general textile strike by picket movements against plants still open. Six strikers were shot dead at Honeapath (South Carolina) in a battle between the workers and a “flying squadron” seeking to prevent the opening of the Chiquola mills. One striker was shot dead at Greenville (South Carolina) in friction with the police guarding the Duncan mills.

LESSON FROM BRITAIN. NEW YORK, September 5. President Roosevelt had a unique questioning of Lord Iliffe, at to-day s regular newspaper Conference at Hyde Park in New York. The President was informed that England recognises the principle of collective bargaining as set forth in, the much-discussed Article Seven A of the United States National Recovery Act. The President, with‘a smile, turned to the visiting journalist and recalled a recent editorial in the London “Times” calling attention to the fact that Britain long has recognised the principle of collective bargaining by Labour, and also expressing surprise at the concern that the question has created in America.

“That is quite so,” responded the slightly-surprised Lord Iliffe. “Labour has responsible union systems 1 in England ever since the General Strike of 1926. The Labour Unions have recognised their responsibilities. Before that, they played their own hand. They feel now that they have got to consider the general good.”