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Chapter 14 · 1934

The Great Textile Strike

Honea Path and the General Walkout of 1934

In the depths of the Great Depression, some four hundred thousand textile workers walked off the job in one of the largest strikes in American history—the largest the South had ever seen. It was called off after about three weeks, and Southern textile organizing was set back for decades.

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National Guardsmen lay down tear gas against pickets at the Woodside Mill, Greenville, South Carolina, during the General Textile Strike of September 1934.
National Guardsmen lay down tear gas against pickets at the Woodside Mill, Greenville, South Carolina, during the General Textile Strike of September 1934.Unidentified press photographers, "Troops Attack Textile Strikers with Bullets, Bayonets and Tear Gas," Daily Worker (New York), September 22, 1934. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The strike of 1934 was a response to the 'stretch-out'—the management practice of assigning workers more machines for the same pay—and to the failure of the New Deal's cotton textile code to deliver on the promise of Section 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act, which guaranteed the right to organize. The United Textile Workers called the strike for Labor Day weekend, and from Maine to Alabama workers walked out. In the South it was met with state-sanctioned force: governors mobilized the National Guard, sheriffs deputized mill loyalists as special officers, and Georgia's governor declared martial law and detained strikers behind barbed wire. At Honea Path, South Carolina, six strikers were shot dead at the Chiquola Mill on September 6, and a seventh died later. The union called off the strike on September 22, accepting a federal mediation report that won almost nothing, and thousands of strikers were blacklisted.

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Classroom Kit

Did the federal government protect or abandon Southern textile workers during the 1934 General Strike?

Primary source

Statement on the Receipt of a Report on the Cotton Textile Strike

Franklin D. Roosevelt, September 20, 1934

The excellent report of the board of inquiry for the Cotton Textile Industry presents findings and recommendations which cover the basic sources of difficulties, and does this in a way which shows the wholly fair and reasonable approach with which the board undertook its task. It is, I think, a good example of the practical way in which industrial problems can be calmly discussed and solved under a republican form of government. It is, of course, greatly to be hoped that a fair solution can be had because of the good-will and intelligence which undoubtedly exist in the industry as a whole including both workers and plant owners.

Context: Roosevelt endorsed the report of the Winant Board, which he had appointed during the strike of roughly 400,000 textile workers. The union called off the strike two days later, but the board's recommendations did little to stop the stretch-out or protect returning strikers.

Source: Franklin D. Roosevelt. Statement on the Receipt of a Report on the Cotton Textile Strike. The American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara. 1934

Primary source

Interview with Sue Hill, Uprising of '34 Collection

Sue Hill, Early 1990s

My daddy was not on the mill ground, he was across the street when they shot him. ... But when they started shooting, people just started running. They were running away from the mill, they shot them in the back, most of 'em, and my daddy was across the street, they shot him five times.

Context: Hill's father was one of the strikers killed on September 6, 1934, when deputies and armed men fired on pickets at the Chiquola Mill in Honea Path, South Carolina. Her account was recorded for the documentary The Uprising of '34.

Source: Sue Hill Interview, Uprising of '34 Collection (L1995-13). Georgia State University Library, Southern Labor Archives

Discussion questions

  1. What did President Roosevelt praise about the board of inquiry's report, and what did he say would make a "fair solution" possible?
  2. Roosevelt issued his statement two weeks after the Honea Path shootings. What does he leave unsaid, and why might a president who needed both Southern political support and labor votes choose those words?
  3. Sue Hill's testimony was recorded for a 1990s documentary that broke decades of community silence about 1934. How do memory and silence affect historians' use of oral history?
  4. The strike ended when the union accepted the board's report, but many strikers were blacklisted and promised protections were not enforced. Do workers today have stronger or weaker protections when they strike? Argue.

Key terms

General strike
A strike in which workers across a whole industry stop work at once; in 1934, textile workers from Maine to Alabama walked out.
Flying squadron
Groups of strikers who traveled by car and truck from mill to mill to shut down production.
Blacklist
A list, shared among employers, of workers who should not be hired, often because of union activity.
NRA code
Rules for wages, hours, and production that industries wrote under the 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act.
Board of inquiry
A group appointed by the government to investigate a dispute and recommend a settlement.

Sources

  1. ScholarshipGeneral Textile Strike (1934). South Carolina Encyclopedia.
  2. ScholarshipUnited Textile Workers of America. South Carolina Encyclopedia.
  3. ScholarshipThe Uprising of '34. West Georgia Textile Heritage Trail.
  4. ScholarshipJacquelyn Dowd Hall, James Leloudis, Robert Korstad, et al. Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World. University of North Carolina Press, 1987.

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