"Damn Union"

Snores of ten textile strikers, abed in the Gastonia, N. C.,* headquarters of the National Textile Workers Union, ceased abruptly early one morning last week when the snorers were nudged awake by revolvers in the hands of a band of masked men. Out into the street the sleepy strikers were marched to the tune of random shots. With crowbar and sledge hammer the invaders--several scores of them, it was too dark to count accurately--set about wrecking the flimsy frame building. Window glass crashed out upon the street and through the aperture went sailing the union's membership and financial records until the sidewalk was white with torn paper. With the headquarters in ruins, the wreckers moved two doors down the street to a striker's grocery store, tossed out its contents, departed into the darkness-before-dawn, leaving this sign: WE HAVE QUIT YOUR DAMN UNION In their underclothes, National Guardsmen rushed up just in time to arrest the no-longer snoring strikers and lodge them in the Gastonia jail for rioting. Thus did the textile strike in North Carolina (TIME, April 8) become rough last week. The National Textile Workers' Union is a Communist organization. The United Textile Workers' Union is a branch of the American Federation of Labor. A contest for control had flared up between these two. The Communist organizers had fostered the Gastonia strike, which now was not moving rapidly enough toward victory to suit the strikers. The mills had hired other workers, continued partial operation. The strikers had grown hungry. Communist Organizers Fred Irwin Beal and George Pershing had dropped out of sight. Many an observer was ready to believe that the raid upon the Communist headquarters in Gastonia was made by disgruntled strikers, weary of the Communist leadership. No excessive effort was made by the National Guardsmen to find the raiders.

Meanwhile United, conservative, waited at Greensboro for the Gastonia strikers to disavow National and invite United to enter and organize in Gastonia for the A. F. of L.

P: For the second time in a month, a strike paralyzed production at the German-owned and operated Bemberg and Glantztoff rayon plants in Elizabethton, Tenn. The A. F. of L. was organizing there to consolidate the first strike's gains when five workers were discharged. The company said they were drunk. But they were also members of the new union, so 25 other employes quit their posts in protest. More followed and before the operators could realize what had happened, 5,000 workers trooped idly through dusty little Elizabethton. Union leaders denied they had called the strike, said it was "spontaneous," urged strikers "to make a real strike out of it." Complaint had been made against the German mill owners that they had not carried out the wage and time agreements which settled the first strike.

Strong-headed, the mill operators prepared to buck the strikers by a lockout. Dr. Arthur Mothwurf, president of the mills, declared that production would cease "until labor conditions became stabilized." Great was the anxiety of Elizabethton boosters who had seen the German rayon factories put their tiny town on the U. S. industrial map.

While Conciliator Charles G. Wood of the U. S. Department of Labor was preparing to leave Elizabethton because of the dark prospect for a strike settlement, Governor Henry Hollis Horton of Tennessee appointed Major George L. Berry, popular president of the International Pressmen's Union, as a state representative to bring about peace. Both sides cheered.

P: In the South Carolina mills, where weavers, without organizing, had struck against new orders calling for increased production from each employe, strikers began to dribble back to their looms as stopwatches disappeared and efficiency experts' reports went into office trash-baskets.

Gastonia was named for William Gaston (1788-1844)--Princeton graduate (1796), member of the 13th and 14th Congresses from North Carolina, Associate Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court (1833--1844), friend of Webster and Clay--and not for his later kinsman, onetime (1875-76) Governor William Gaston of Massachusetts, as stated by TIME, April 8. Carolina's Judge Gaston, for his character and learning, was elected to the bench in spite of a provision of the State Constitution then barring Roman Catholics from public office.