State

The City Aflame When "Communism Reared Its 1 gly Head In Gastonia.** tty KOIIIJIT I.. WILLIAMS Beginning in 1816. when the first cotlon mill in Ihc South was estab¬ lished on the South Fork River near Gastonia, an empire began to grow very slowly at first, then with amazing rapidity, until, by 1925. Gastonia and outlying areas could lay claim to being the cotton mill capital of the world. And. as the economy grew to depend more and more upon the cotton mills, the inevitable unrest accelerated, evolved into a crisis, and culminated in the worst labor dispute in Carolina history and one of the most sensational trials in the history of the nation. By 1929. when the tragic series of events reached a disastrous climax. Gastonia's infamous Loray strike was a topic of world-wide interest. Before the year was over, the strike and en¬ suing events attracted such literary notables as Sinclair Lewis. Theodore Dreiser. Sherwood Anderson, and LeGcttc Blythe. And the trial's repercussions reached to Fngland. Soviet Russia, and other major countries of F.urope and even Asia. Ihe victims of the city's reign of terror included Police Chief W. (). Adcrholt. poet-leader Klla May Wig¬ gins. and dozens of others who lost only property or sustained physical injuries. The Villains The ostensible villains in the clash were the Communist Party represen¬ tatives who had come from New York and California for the express purpose of creating chaos among the working class. One leader, in a speech deliv¬ ered on the steps of the Gaston County courthouse, declared that the key to the nation was the South, the key to the South was North Carolina, and the key to North Carolina was Gaston County. The key to Gaston County was. of course, the gigantic Loray Mill, which was the seventh mill to be erected in Gastonia, the first to be owned by "outside" capitalists (the Manville- Jcnckes Company w as operating out of Rhode Island offices), and reportedly the largest single mill under one roof in the entire world. By 1928 Loray Mill employed 3.500 workers, boasted I I8.4CK) spindles, and the mill village w hich surrounded I oray had a popu¬ lation of over $.000. Loray differed from other mills in several key respects: the mill was fenced in (and known by the workers as “The Jail"), had an extremely high turnover, paid lower than many other mills, and had imported hundreds of workers from the foothills of the mountains and installed them in com- % Police Chief w. 0. Aderholt, sloin in the 1929 sttike, wot a beloved man ond police officer, and hi» dcoth *01 olio the hilling blow to the itrihe, oi the community wov up in ormi over the shooting. рапу houses. The highest paid men at Loray earned, for working a fifty-five hour shift. $4. 36 daily: lowest paid men earned $2.54. Highest and lowest paid women earned, respectively. $3.27 and $1.81. The major distinction at Loray. however, was the use of the "stretch¬ out." a system w hich methodically re¬ duced the number of w orkers on a par¬ ticular job until perhaps eight men would be doing the work originally as¬ signed to fifteen or twenty. To make matters worse, wages began to drop steadily as workers out numbered jobs, and finally the av¬ erage weekly wage was $1.3 for a 55- hour week. Violence Breaks Out The leader of the strike, which began on April I. 1929. was Fred Beal, de¬ scribed by fellow workers as a red¬ headed. good-natured, very polite and cooperative man who had no enemies, who had worked for the National Tex¬ tile Workers Union in New York and had been one of the leaders in the ill- fated I awrcnce. Massachusetts, strike earlier. Beal, who lived and worked in Charlotte before coming to Gastonia, took a job at Loray and immediately began organizing a massive walkout. But before plans could be finalized. Beal’s role w as exposed by a company spy. Beal was fired, and the strike had to be called prematurely. Nearly all workers on both shifts walked out at Beal's orders. The old loroy Mill, o*n«d by ih* Monville-Jencket Company of Rhode Island, no* the Gastonia Firestone factory, wot the scene of the now-infamout strike of 1929 that attracted important lournaliitt from acron the country. Common kno»ledge of Commumit tici with the strike aroused community ond stole sentiment ogoinst the strike. (Gostomo Chamber of Commerce photo) 54 THE STATE, JANUARY 1984