Pioneer Hardships

With pride the cotton textile industry points to itself as the biggest single industry in the U. S., because it employs more workers than any other. With equal pride NRA points to it as the first industry to take a code, the first to abolish child labor, cut hours, raise wages. So neither the industry nor the Administration could last week read with equanimity reports that every single employe of the U. S.'s biggest industry would soon be without a job as the result of a "national cotton textile strike," called by the United Textile Workers of America, affiliate of the A. F. of L. Preliminary negotiations having fallen flat, union leaders proclaimed their intention of fighting to a finish. Madam Secretary Perkins, said Washington wags, had fainted when she heard the news. The report was false and besides her office promptly denied that the Secretary of Labor had ever fainted in her life.

"Someone had to pioneer. Some industry had to translate theory into action, to turn the mere potentialities of the Recovery Act . . . into actualities. . . . The cotton textile industry has thus taken its courage in its hands. It has blocked out a plan of operations on its sector of the industrial front and today, putting that plan into effect, advances as the spearhead of the attack. . . ." Such was the stirring announcement with which the Industry plunged into NRA 13 months ago.

Last week the spearhead was quivering, its nose buried in a labor dispute, but it had not reached there at a single flight. Long had the cotton textile industry desired better things. In 1926 it obtained one of those better things, a Cotton-Textile Institute. As secretary for its Institute it got a bright, handsome young son of one of Nashville's leading department store owners. His name was George Arthur Sloan and, as Secretary of the Copper & Brass Research Association, he had learned the art of running trade associations. He plunged into the job of finding new uses for cotton textiles--cotton wall paper, cotton writing paper, cotton roofing.

Onward he went with his good work. In 1929, the same year in which he married Florence Lincoln, wealthy divorced wife of William A. Rockefeller, he became, at the age of 36, president of his Institute. He launched still greater programs, teaching cotton mills to install accounting systems, to allot overhead costs, campaigning against night work for women and children. In May, 1933 Secretary Roper decorated his Institute with the annual Award of the American Trade Association Executives "for outstanding service to industry."

Four days later Mr. Sloan had an even bigger project afoot. One of the better things desired by many mill owners, who had been having tough sledding for years, was surcease from cutthroat competition. President Sloan called his Institute members together and suggested that they form a code of fair competition. On that day General Hugh Johnson was still an unknown lieutenant of a famed speculator named Bernard Baruch. An offer from the Institute was sent to the President and a month later, before the Recovery Act was passed, Mr. Sloan marched into the White House and slapped a draft of the cotton textile code down on Franklin Roosevelt's desk.

No easy task had Mr. Sloan in getting three-quarters of his industry to agree to a code that outlawed child labor in the mills, cut working hours from as high as 55 to 40 per week, set a minimum wage of $12 in the South, $13 in the North. On July 17, the day his code went into effect, he made his stirring declaration: "Someone had to pioneer."

By autumn Mr. Sloan proudly counted the results: the industry's 320,000 employes in March had become 465,000 in September. Its $12,800,000 monthly payroll had become $26,000,000 in September. Textile workers were earning 40% more per week in spite of working shorter hours. Everyone was proud.

First Trouble. Early in 1933, while Herbert Hoover was still in office but while New Deal measures were beginning to be discussed, George Sloan issued a statement opposing such a cotton processing tax as AAA later imposed. He declared : "The extensive price increases necessitated by the tax will decrease the consumption of cotton and cause widespread displacement of workers in the cotton textile industry." By autumn the price of cotton had jumped from 6-c- to 92 1/2c, per Ib. and on top of that was a 4.2-c- processing tax. Labor was costing the industry 69% more per hour. The price of cotton print goods followed the trend of costs by doubling from March to September.

In early December NRA proudly announced "an outstanding example of effective self-government and planned production in industry." To prevent "seasonal overproduction" the cotton textile industry would reduce its December output by 25%. There were good excuses for this failure of purchasing demand besides the increased price of cotton goods. In May and June before the code went into effect, buyers anticipating price increases had stocked up with large quantities of cotton goods which had to be sold to the public before steady demand could be resumed. And since the textile code was the first of its kind, it was necessary for the industry to wait until the payrolls of other industries increased public buying power. No body minded the December reduction much. Labor was still satisfied with its new wage increases and the mills had made fat profits on May and June sales.

In January the mills went back to normal production allowed by their code (two shifts of 40 hours a week). They kept at it until June, but NRA's expected surge of public buying power did not develop. Unsold goods piled higher and higher. At the end of May, NRA proclaimed another 25% reduction in output to be effective for twelve weeks (TIME, June 11).

Second Trouble. By that time Labor had developed an acute distaste for a system of cutting down supply which also cut down wages by 25%. But Labor had another major complaint. The mills were trying to offset high wages by resorting to the "stretch-out," the hated practice whereby a worker is forced to tend more and more looms. These were not the only two troubles which NRA had brought. Section 7 (a) had sent the A. F. of L. out on a mighty crusade to unionize the industry. With the prestige of the Recovery Act behind them, and the assertion that the President wanted workers to join the A. F. of L., union agents made great progress below the Potomac River. Next step was to do something for their new members and United Textile Workers' President, genial, well-dressed old Tom McMahon, issued an ultimatum that working hours might be cut from 40 to 30 hours but weekly wages must remain the same. General Johnson called him in, soothed him down with a compromise: 1) an investigation to see whether the industry could afford higher wages; 2) a place for a representative of his union on the Cotton Textile Industrial Relations Board. To add to U. T. W. prestige President McMahon himself got a job on NRA's Labor Advisory Board.

First Year. Twelve months after Mr. Sloan went pioneering, he had in justice to himself to make a report. Proudly he rehearsed again all that his code had done for labor. Then he added:

"While the industry takes pride in the tremendous gains for its workers under the code, the stockholder is still the forgotten man. . . . Today we are again confronted with profitless operations, closely bordering on pre-code conditions."

The public had not come to buy in volume at higher prices. With NRA wages, and with the Government pegging the price of cotton, the cotton mills were hung on a limb, all dressed up with high prices and few customers to sell to.

Mr. Sloan had had one desperately hard year. Twice every week he had gone to Washington. He had become a sort of diplomatic shuttle, going back and forth pacifying each of the 1,001 people, in Government and out, who needed to be brought into line. He decided he did not want to be a "traveling salesman," resigned from the Institute and Code Authority. Then pressure was put upon him. Last week, having been promised an assistant to take over many of his diplomatic duties, he agreed to lead the "pioneering" industry into a second year, to face more trouble.

Sept. 1. When General Johnson promised Tom McMahon that he would have the possibility of higher wages investigated, he kept his word. He appointed a committee of NRA economists to find out whether the industry could stand higher wages without further boosting prices, further reducing the demand for its goods. The investigators answered: "Under existing conditions there is no factual or statistical basis for any general increase in cotton textile code wage rates."

Fortnight ago the United Textile Workers held a meeting in Manhattan and with only a handful of dissenting votes demanded that NRA increase wages, cut hours, end the "stretch-out" and grant them union recognition. Otherwise--a strike on or about Sept. 1. Since President McMahon had been elevated to the Labor Advisory Board, Vice President Francis J. Gorman, a dark, stocky, ruddy-faced man, equally as well dressed as Leader McMahon, but more aggressive, was sent to Washington to prepare for the strike. Turning down overtures of the Cotton Textile Industrial Relations Board, he announced that 300,000 cotton textile workers would quit, bringing the whole industry to a sudden stop.

Although the union had less than $1,000,000 in its war chest, it expected the Relief Administration to take care of its workers on strike, as FERA is already taking care of some 20,000 textile workers on strike in Alabama. So unless FERA fell down on the job, it looked as if the strike would be well financed.

United Textile Workers' biggest hold is in the newly organized South. In the New England area where the industry has been organized for years, U. T. W. is not the only union. The American Federation of Textile Operatives (independent unions which do not like paying A. F. of L. dues) control a good part of New England's textile labor. They refused to join in the U. T. W.'s threat of a strike last June, and in parts of New England where they are dominant it is doubtful whether a strike would be effective.

After A. F. of L. pleas to join the new strike, one of the New England unions, which last year seceded asked its members: "How was the $170,000, which you contributed as dues to the United Textile Workers spent? . . . What have the leaders of the U. T. W. done about benefiting the condition of the textile workers of America with their bluff strikes and false promises? . . . They say you made a mistake. . . . The only mistake you made was to take the fat juicy plums away from those who lived on you like scavengers for over 15 years."

Thus the "national strike of textile workers" remained a question mark. Last week President Roosevelt ordered NRA to cut the hours of cotton garment workers (not to be confused with cotton textile workers) from 40 to 36 per week and grant a wage increase of 10 to 11% to offset the shorter hours. United Textile Workers talked of winning a similar cut from 40 to 30 hours without reduction in pay, but few people believed that NRA would dare impose such an extra burden on the cotton textile industry. Much of the industry itself did not even care if a strike were called, for many millmen felt that an involuntary shut-down would avert overproduction. To Mr. Sloan the threat of a strike was not so much a grievous danger as just one more hardship to be borne as the price of pioneering.

As the week closed, garment executives met in Manhattan, resolved that they "could not accept or acquiesce in the President's demands," called them "unjustifiable, unwarranted, burdensome and inequable." From the violence of their reaction, observers guessed that the president would not back up the textile workers in their designs for shorter hours.

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