150 Local Workers Are On Strike, Aug. 7, 1919

From The Review, High Point, N.C., Thursday, Aug. 7, 1919

Great Unrest of Labor Shows Hand Here. . . Some 150 Employes of Several Plants Walkout Monday, Claiming that Union Men Were Fired. . . Labor Leaders Come Here and Make Speeches

The great unrest of labor throughout the country has become local and High Point today is facing the situation of striking employes, something that is hardly known here, in fact being the second time in the history of the city.

Monday morning some 150 men employed at local plants quit work, claiming that unin men were fired and thus calling for recognition of the union which was organized here recently and which has received new impetus lately through the arrival of several union leaders.

The idle are known to include furniture and glass workers employed at the Tomlinson Chair company, the Giant Furniture company, the Mirror company, the Piedmont Hosiery Mills, and other local plants.

Officials of the affected plants had no statements to make in regard to the alleged causes of dissatisfaction on the art of the laborers, Monday.

A meeting of the Carpenters and Joiners Union was held Saturday night at 8:30 o’clock in the hall over the Robertson’s store on East Green street. The meeting was addressed by Scott Kiser of Indiana. Mr. Scott, recently of the coal miners’ union, has joined the local union and works in this city.

After the address the meeting was closed for a business session and no details were forthcoming.

Printed circulars were distributed over the city advertising a union speaking Monday evening at 8:30 o’clock. Marvin Rich of Charlotte and J.H. Graham were the principal speakers at this meeting.

At this meeting a large crowd assembled and listened to the speeches of a local man and several outsiders.

The union men say that members of their body were fired because they had joined the union and that others quit work and will continue to do so out of sympathy for their fellow members.

Labor has its problem to solve as well as the manufacturer and business man—one is essential to the other and we trust each side will view the matter in this light and conduct the proceedings as far as humanly possible in a spirit of brotherly love, free from bitterness and strife and that no one will try to array one class against the other, because such a proposition inevitably leads to rain. (rain? That’s what was written.) Let no side be unwilling to treat with the other for indifference gets no where. After all we are pretty much the same constituted—just human beings—or big grown up boys—willing to do the right thing in the last analysis or at least most of us are.