Mr. Ritch filed the bill of complaint in the clerk of court’s office and recites the main facts n the case in considerable detail. The incident that resulted in the shooting had a beginning in Charlotte, it is alleged, when John Mercer, who has worked at Mooresville, Charlotte and other cotton mills of the south and many in the north, was arrested here by United States Deputy Marshal E.S. Williams on a warrant sworn out before United States Commissioner J.W. Cobb, charging him with interfering with the operation of the selective draft for military service and seeking to stir up labor trouble by falsely charging the government with being run in the interest of capital instead of labor.
The allegations further recite that a brother of John Mercer had a brother who was regarded as having been the main instigator of labor trouble in the Hamilton Carhartt Mills at or near Rock Hill and that John Meercer and his brother caused trouble at Mooresville, by attempting to organize a new union of textile workers at Mooresville, notwithstanding the fact that the employes of the mill there belonged to the Textile Workers of America, which is a branch of the State Federation of Labor; by reason of the agitation about this matter feeling developed among employes at the mill at Mooresville to such an extent that Hoyt Mercer, (three Mercers being the storm center) one day got a gun and went into the mill where he shot down J.P. Rinehardt.
It is alleged that the mill company was negligent in that it did not present guard from maintaining order about the plant and allowing an (word obscure) person with a gun to walk into the plant and shoot an employe at whom he was angered. The incident happened December 3, 1920. Rinehardt, the man killed, had shortly before his death, returned from serving with the A.E.F. in France.
From The Charlotte News, Saturday afternoon, March 12, 1921
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