Why the Textile Workers in the South Spread so Quickly

Why the Textile Workers in the South Spread so Quickly

The textile industry was, at one time, one of the largest industries in the south. Starting in the late 1800’s with small local looms, and spreading to become corporations who controled the south and whose influence stretched internationally. One of the first textile industries came to Gaston County North Carolina, and its huge success led to the opening of mills across the Carolina’s and Virginia. As these industries grew they began to control more and more of its employees lives. These huge corporations were permitted to take advantage of individuals because of their inability to fight back. The employyees of these mills lived in conditions resembling that of slaves before the civil war. They were worked greuling hours in inhospitable prisons called textile plants, yet were paid on average less than any other industrial worker in America. In the early twentieth century a sentiment of contempt began to grow between the laboring class and the all-powerful corporation. The masses began to push for union representation.

The importance of this industry is represented by the industries numbers. Textiles was the foundation of southern economy. In 1900 there were one hundred seventy-seven mills in North Carolina, but by the early nineteen twenties, that number had grown to over five hundred, with fifty in Gaston County alone. Textiles was a booming industry in the south. South Carolina employed only 2,053 people in the industry at the turn of the century, but by 1920 nearly 50,000 people worked in mills, one sixth of South Carolina’s population. Virginia’s textile industry grew just as quickly with the incorporation of the Riverside Cotton Mills which had only 2,240 spindles and a mere one hundred looms. By the turn of the century the mill expanded and operated 67,650 spindles and 200,000 looms. Growth seemed to continue almost exponentially until the depression set in in 1929.

It could easily be said that the depression was the cause of the ill will that the workers felt toward their employers. Although the mills seemed to be doing great, grossing sales in the billions of dollars, the working class in the mills were seeing very little of the industries success. Textile workers earned less than any other laborer, and in North Carolina average wages were the least. With the success a...

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...tikers. Strikers were garunteed releif when they went on strike. Also, other New Deal programs were created. Discrimination because of union affiliation was prohibited. However, workers were still evictd for joining unions. (Hall 300-301). A native of the Graniteville Mill in South carolina said that “she had never joined a union, for reasons that to her seemed the essence of common sence” (Hall 306).

“’There was no union whatever in Graniteville S.C. before the National Industrial Recovery act was make law as the Employers would not allow ti… they would discharge anyone who joined a Union, but after the Law was passed and put in effect, we thought that we would be protected by the Federal Government [and] that no Employer could discharge any worker becau7se they joined a Union of their own choosing.’ On June 19, 1933, just three days after roosevelt signed the NIRA, she paid her dues and became a full member of the TWUA… On August 8 the second hand got orders to fire her on the grounds that she couln’t keep up her work. If her work had not been satifactory, she concluded, they would have fired her long before. They ‘discharged me for joining the Union.’” (Hall 306-307)