Declaring that the textile manufacturers are very unfair in forcing the workers to assume all the risks of loss and dull periods, the Joint Council of Textile Workers of the Carolina meeting in Mooresville last Saturday adopted strong resolutions calling upon the manufacturers to play the game like men and assume their full share of the responsibilities of the industry. It was emphatically stated by many delegates in speaking on the resolution that the employers are very one-sided in their contention of business ethics and practice.
While the resolution delt only with the practice of curtailment in dull times, the discussions went much further than that, and showed how the employers force the workers to bear the brunt of the losses in making cloth, even when bad machinery, poor yarn, bum warping or any other of the many things that enter into the textile industry cause the worker to make bad cloth.
“It’s just a case with the manufacturers of heads I win, tales you lose,” was the way one old textile worker put it. If a piece of bad cloth comes out, the worker is “docked”. If business gets dull, the mills stop. If business is good, the manufacturer fails to place any of the extra money in the pay envelope of the worker.
Many reports were made showing where families are actually in want because of the curtailment of the mills. Attention was called to the fact that when a strike is on, and the workers are idle for a few weeks, the public is deeply concerned about how the poor textile workers are to live, and much speech-making is indulged in by clubs and gangs of divers kinds, and the union is lambasted from one end of the state to the other for stopping the industry and throwing people out of work. But when the mills strike, that is, when the employers stop the works, there’s never a chirp from any of these soulful folks who have duck fits when a strike is on.
It was also suggested that troops have been used by the governor in times agone, when strikes were in progress, for starting up work in the mills. But when the mill owners strike, or curtail, or whatever it is one wants to do, there is no suggestion from any one that the governor send troops to start the mills up.
The resolution follows:
“Whereas, the curtailment now in effect in many textile mills is working a hardship upon the textile workers; the part-time work and the resultant small income to the wage-earners in the industry is telling upon the health of the workers and of their families, and
“Whereas, it is manifestly unfair to the textile workers to be forced to assume all the risk of loss in the industry and bear all the burdens of uncertainty of business and assume all the chance in the operation of this great industry, and
“Whereas, the practice of the mills is running only when they can make big profits, and closing down when these profits are not so big, thereby giving to the manufacturers the big profits in good times and causing the workers to bear the brunt of losses in bad times, is so one-sided in its sense of fairness and justice that the manufacturers should be ashamed to face their friends.
“Therefore, it is resolved, by the Joint Council of Textile Workers that the manufacturers be called upon to play the game like men and shoulder their full share of the responsibilities of the industry and it is
“Further resolved that we ask the press to publish these resolutions that the merchants and doctors and others interested may know why it is impossible for the textile workers to meet their bills promptly, the reason being that the manufacturers force the workers to assume all the losses of the industry while the manufacturers take all the profits in the days of good business. It is also
“Resolved, that the manufacturers be called upon to accept a reasonable profit for their manufactured products for we know full well that this course would enable the people to buy more cotton goods, which in turn would increase the demand for such goods, and this of itself would reestablish the industry and give to those employed therein the opportunity of working full time.
Reports were made by some of the delegates that there had been no curtailment at all in places where they work. These delegates also told how the workers are co-operating with employers in such places, doing all in their power to save every little thing and every moment about the mills, in an effort to reduce to the very minimum any loss that might be incurred through operation at this time.
Other delegates presented the view that the manufacturers are not content with a profit that would have been considered a good profit before the war. It was recalled that the textile manufacturers made from 100 to 500 and 600 per cent during the war, and that time of tremendous profits went to the manufacturer’s heads, and they can never be satisfied with a reasonable profit again. It was pointed out that if the manufacturers would sell at a reasonable profit, thereby reducing the prices of the manufactured goods, that the buying public would consume more of the goods, which in turn, would create a bigger demand and thereby re-establish the industry.
Saturday’s meeting was the biggest meeting ever held by the Joint Council, and reports showed that the workers have been busy organizing during the period of curtailment.
Mooresville reported nearly 100 new members during the month of March.
President C.P. Barringer was present and was very much interested throughout the business session of the meeting, which began at 4 o’clock in the afternoon.
The next meeting will be held on the last Saturday in April in Rock Hill, S.C. The local union there owns its own hall, and it is expected that a large crowd will go to the South Carolina city, as it is the first time the Council meeting has gone to that state in several months.
From the front page of The Charlotte Herald, April 4, 1924. “The Charlotte Herald Is Pleading the Cause of the Man Who Works for Wages.”
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