Never before in the history of the organized labor movement has there been a greater or more enthusiastic (line obscured) than that held in Belmont, Gaston county, last Saturday. The business session, which began at 4 o’clock and lasted until after 7, was full of interest, and reports of the various locals and the new business acted upon combined to make the gathering of untold value to the workers. The social portion of the meeting, which was an ice cream supper served in the Imperial Mill grove, brought about 2,000 people together, where entertainment, singing, speaking, and the serving of ice cream, and cold drinks combined to keep the big crowd happy until well after 10 o’clock.
Three of the most important matters coming before the Joint Council meeting can be summed up as follows:
To invite State Superintendent of Public Instruction to visit the next Council meeting, which will be held in Mooresville on the last Saturday in July, and at the same time have President James M. Ellis of the North Carolina Federation of Labor attend the gathering of the Carolina textile workers.
To take advantage of the time when mills are closed down for repairs or other purposes to wage an aggressive organization campaign in such communities where and while the mills are so closed down.
To begin working right now for the 48-hour work week, and let nothing interfere with this progressive campaign for 8 hours a day for the textile workers.
The superintendent of public instruction will be asked to attend the next council meeting for the purpose of giving him first hand information about the custom of the boys and girls of the mill villages stopping school before they have finished High School. It is seldom a boy or girl from the homes of the textile workers are ever allowed to graduate in the High Schools, and the United Textile Workers of America, together with other organized crafts, have been busily engaged for the past several months in the Carolinas on the work of crystalizing sentiment among the fathers and mothers engaged in the textile industry to have their children remain in the schools until they have at least finished high school.
Then the government figures that only one person in every 114 are college graduates has been holding the attention of the textile union for some time. Even that per cent is small, and yet the officials of the textile union have failed to find a single case where a boy or a girl from the homes of the textile workers in North or South Carolina has ever graduated at any college.
So among the workers in the biggest industry of the Carolinas there come the fewest high school graduates and no college graduates at all. For these reasons it is deemed advisable to have the superintendent of public instruction meet with the workers and seek his advice as to how this deplorable condition can best be remedied.
It was pointed out at the meeting that when the mills are closed down in any section for repairs or for other reasons, that while the workers are idle is the best time to wage an aggressive campaign among all the workers. They being idle for a week or more gives the active members ample time to visit all the other workers and find them with time on their hands sufficient to listen to the many reasons why they should be in the organization of the workers. All the organizers were instructed by the Council to spend their full time in such sections where the mills are closed for repairs, and work every day and every evening in such communities, as it provides opportunities for meeting and talking with the workers that cannot be found when all are at work.
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From the front page of the Charlotte Herald, July 6, 1923
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