Abstract

Textiles: an NRA Strike

At this moment the U.S. textile industry is thoroughly crippled by one of the dozen largest strikes in American history. With 364,000 of their workers on strike, the employers who were so truculent a week ago show at least a disposition to mediate. If the strike can be settled quickly, the workers may gain much, providing their leaders take full advantage of the strength behind them. If he strike is prolonged, it may be lost in the violence for which the armed forces of the textile States are preparing at the behest of mill-owners, and the mill towns will be bathed in the blood of Americans who are asking for the munificent income of $12 and $13 a week. In the South, whose sweated textile labor forced the strike upon the national leadership of the United Textile Workers, violence has already begun. Here in New England, where the strike is to a great extent a sympathetic movement, no serious incidents have occurred. There have been a few brushes between pickets and police but the violence of these affairs has appeared mostly in the newspaper stories sent out by harried reporters whose employers have a vested interest in violence.