[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

WILLIAM FINGER:

Joe, why don't we start with your early years. I don't know much about where you grew up. Did you work in a mill yourself as a young boy?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, I can cover that very briefly. I am a native Virginian, I came from Roanoke, Virginia. That's back in the mountains and there was a plant at that time in Roanoke, American Viscose, a synthetic fiber producing plant. I went to work for American Viscose when I was about twenty years of age, I guess.

WILLIAM FINGER:

When were you born?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

In 1908.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What kind of setting in Roanoke was your father from?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, my father was a carpenter and cabinet maker and he had his own shop and did some contract work, too, on the side, but basically in his later years, he confined his work to his carpentry shop.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Was he a member of the carpenters union?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes. It was something that Dad took for granted. I never heard a union mentioned at home until we moved to Roanoke in, I believe, 1924. The North and Western Railroad was out on strike at that time and I had a brother that was older than I, I was just a little small kid and my brother was about eighteen and the first mention that i ever heard mention of the union from my father was that my brother made a remark at the breakfast table one morning to the effect that he wasn't scared of those fellows standing around up there with those sticks and

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clubs, that he was going up there and get a job. My father was a person who never did have much to say, but what he said, he meant. He just laid his fork and knife down and said, "No you are not. Those jobs belong to those fellows standing around up there with those sticks and clubs. The thing will be over with one of these days and if there are any jobs left over, it will be all right for you to get a job."

WILLIAM FINGER:

So, your father hadn't talked about unions that much?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

He said, "No son of mine is going to scab a job and then eat at my house." Well, I worshipped my Dad, so I figured that a scab must be a pretty dirty sort of character. I think that was my first indoctrination to unions.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You were ten or twelve years old?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah, I was not older than that. I actually didn't know that my father was a member of the union until he asked me to help him fill out some papers after I was grown and married. He was bidding on some interior work at the Veterans Hospital and had just reams of paper to fill out by way of questionnaires and he was impatient with them and asked me to help him. I was asking the questions and writing in the answers and one of the questions was, "Are you a member of a trade organization?" He said, "Yes." I didn't look up and asked the next question of "How long?" He said, "Thirty-seven years." There had never been any mention of it at home at all, it was just something that he took for granted.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Were there many unions in Roanoke when you grew up?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

At that time, we were the only ones. We started out from scratch in 1931 …

WILLIAM FINGER:

"We" is the Textile Workers?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah, I had gone to work at this Viscose plant and a few of us began to get together in 1931 and at that time, of course, there was no law to protect you at all and we were slipping around like we were selling bootleg liquor to try to get a few people organized, so that the company wouldn't get wise until we had a little strength.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you go to college?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You just worked in the area?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Right.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you go to high school?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes, but I went to work at Viscose … I believe that I was nineteen at the time that I started at Viscose. So, we finally got that plant organized and got recognized without any election. There was no such thing as an election, of course.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Well, tell me about how you first came to think about a union at all.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, conditions were pretty bad in the '30s and you could make the least mistake and there would be some little cockroach foreman that would run up to you and say, "Look, Pedigo, if you can't do this work right, there is a barefooted boy outside looking for a job." He was telling the truth, there was, plenty of them out there looking for jobs. It didn't make you feel any better. As far as I was concerned, if I never got anything out of the union, if I never got a raise or vacations or anything else, just to get rid of hearing that kind of stuff and be able to look the guy in the eye and speak my piece was what I was

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after and I think that a number of the other people were motivated by the same reason, just a question of human dignity. You didn't like to take the kind of guff you had to take in this plant.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did someone come to you and say, "Joe, why don't you come to a meeting on such and such a night?"

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I think that it was the other way around.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You went to other people. [Laughter]

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I was a charter member there and I was in the spinning section and I got to talking with a man from the Viscose section that was interested and that I trusted and he in turn knew of an engineer and there were the three major departments there. We started from that.

WILLIAM FINGER:

About how many people were in the plant?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, there were 4500 people in the plant.

WILLIAM FINGER:

4500?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah, at the time.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And you had never had any contact with the union and didn't know what a union was?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Didn't know a thing in the world about it except that we needed one.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You must have read about unions in newspapers.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Very little and there was very little in the Roanoke newspapers about unions. Well, there would be something about strikes now and then, but that was about it. So, we organized …

WILLIAM FINGER:

Had you ever heard of 1929?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Oh, '29, sure.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You had heard about that when you were working in the plant?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Sure, everybody heard about that, the '29 and '30 battle.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Well, Danville isn't that far from Roanoke, is it?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And there was a big strike in Danville.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you feel kind of sympathetic to them?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, at that time, frankly, my recollection just doesn't go into that '29 and '30 thing too much. The '33 and '34 scrap was the one that I got involved in. I got involved with the flying squadrons.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You did?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

We went all over the country, including Danville. In fact, a bunch of us got turned back in Danville, they found out that we were coming and turned us back at the city limits.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Before you get to '34, one more thing about '29 and '30. People have written about those strikes, that the efficiency plans and machines were coming in and that was one of the reasons. Was any kind of efficiency program coming into the Viscose plant?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Not at that time in our branch of the industry. You see, I was in synthetic fibers, which was sort of the aristocrat of the industry. At the time that these cotton mills were paying eighteen or twenty cents an hour, we were making fairly decent money for that period of time, in synthetics. It was the highest paid section.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Who owned the company?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

American Viscose Corporation, it is now a part of FMC.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What did you make in those days, do you remember?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Rayon.

WILLIAM FINGER:

No, I mean, what kind of money?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Oh, the spinners' rate was sixty-nine cents an hour at the time. That compared with rates being paid in cotton textile plants of twenty cents, I believe.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Well, it sounds like you were pretty militant, though, in '31 when you formed the local and then in '34, despite your relatively good wage.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, as I said, the conditions, the lack of dignity that you had in the plant, you were just constantly harassed by supervision and I think that was the motivating thing with most people. The fact that we had the best job around, if we got fired there, there was no place to go that paid anything comparable to what we were making and the company knew it and as a result of the company knowing it …

WILLIAM FINGER:

They kind of had you in a bind.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

They had us in a bind and we just got tired of it. I recall the first meeting that we had, we held it uptown and I slipped around to thirty-five or forty people that I trusted and told them about the meeting. Not a one showed up, there were just the same old faithful seven.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Seven people, in a plant of 4500?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes. So, I finally decided that the reason that nobody showed up was that each one was afraid of the other. So, the next meeting that we had, I went up to a guy and ask him to come to the meeting and he would want to know who was coming and I would say, "Well, you are the only one from this shop. There is going to be somebody from viscose and somebody from engineering." He would say, "O.K.," and I would tell the next fellow the same thing. At the next meeting, I had about twenty people, but each one of them was scared of the other one.

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That's why they hadn't shown up the first time. But we didn't have anybody in the union to speak of, we had about 800 when the company called our hand. I was the temporary President of the group, we were collecting dues, so the secretary-treasurer worked in the same shop that I did and the foreman came up to me one day in the spinning room and said, "They want you up at the front office." I stepped off the platform and I saw this guy who was the secretary-treasurer step off the other end of the platform and he saw me and waited on me, he had had the same message, so we knew what was up before we got there. We walked in the office, the plant manager was a German, very abrupt, I had a lot of respect for him later on, but at the time I didn't. He didn't even invite us to sit down. He said, "What is this that I hear about a union starting up down here?" I looked at this other boy and he looked at me and I decided that well, it had hit the fan now and I might as well go on with it. I said, "Well, I don't know what you've been hearing, there is a union down here, if that is what you want to know." "Why haven't they been to see me. I thought they were to bargain with the management?" I said, "Well, that's true, but I'll be honest with you. The reason that we haven't been to see you was that we wanted to make sure that we had enough people in the union that if you fired us when we did come to see you, you weren't going to be able to make silk, and I'm glad you sent for us, because we are in that position now." He went through quite a long rigamarole about why did we need a union, his office was always open and we countered by telling him that it was a pretty long way from number six spinning room to his office and by the time that you got there, a telephone call would always beat you there. We had had a little experience with that. Finally, I saw that he wasn't

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going to fire us and I thought, "Well, we might as well start trying to push our luck a little bit more," and I said, "Well look, Mr. Nerrin, the fellows are looking for me back down there in that spinning room and if I don't get back down there pretty soon, something is liable to happen and I wouldn't want that." You couldn't have pulled those people out of there with a locomotive. [Laughter]

WILLIAM FINGER:

You were a pretty good bluffer for a young whippersnapper, weren't you?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I said, "I've got to tell them something when I get back, so are you going to recognize us or not?" He said, "Of course I recognize it, there is no darn sense in the damn thing, but I recognize it." We went back and spread the word and rented the American Legion Hall and had people standing up on the sidewalks all the way up the steps and lined up on the sidewalks like an unemployment line, waiting to join the union. We organized that thing overnight.

WILLIAM FINGER:

That's amazing.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

It was just on his word.

WILLIAM FINGER:

This was 1931?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah, '31. '32 was the first contract.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So, he signed a contract?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

The contract said … it was then called the Viscose Corporation of Virginia … "The Viscose Corporation of Virginia hereby recognizes Local 18 … "whatever it was, … "as a collective bargaining agency for such people as are members of it." Period.

WILLIAM FINGER:

It didn't specify any wages or anything?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No wages or anything, just recognition for such people as were members. But we lived and handled grievances and …

WILLIAM FINGER:

And you continued to meet with him and …

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Oh yes.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You were president of the local?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah, I was the first temporary president and then we had the election of regular full-time officers and I nominated a fellow by the name of Warren. I was just a kid at the time and I didn't figure that people would follow me the way they would this fellow. He was highly respected. I nominated him and he was elected and was the first permanent president.

WILLIAM FINGER:

But even then, you kind of engineered that, though.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah. He was the one I wanted.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Tell me, why is it that out of all those people in Roanoke, you were twenty-three years old, and you kind of took that initiative.?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I don't know, it was just a feeling that I had. Of course, at that time, I was pretty radical.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Had you read things? Did it come from your mother?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah, I always read everything that I could get my hands on from the time I was old enough to read. I was a sort of a budding Socialist, Norman Thomas had been in the area and I was playing around with socialist ideas and that was just one more step.

WILLIAM FINGER:

How did you first hear of Norman Thomas?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I worked with a fellow, I called him "Doc." He was a doctor, but didn't ever practice, he became a foreman for the company and was a Socialist and an atheist, his father was a Duncard minister and a Republican …

WILLIAM FINGER:

That's a lot of strikes, isn't it? [Laughter]

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I had a lot of respect for that old fellow, he had a lot of wit and was well educated and I had a lot of talks with him and I think that he influenced me more than anybody around. I know that he got me to the first Socialist meeting when they were organizing the Socialist Party. We had a pretty good local there at one time.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Is this before you were organizing the plant?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

It was concurrent, really.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Well, how did you first meet Doc? Was it in the plant?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah, he was a foreman at the plant and I have never known why that company didn't fire that fellow because when the TWOC was set up and we got a shot in the arm and had those TWOC badges and he wore one of those doughboy hats and he pinned those TWOC buttons all the way around his hat and walked all over the place with it and the company never said a word to him about it, I don't guess. He was still a foreman when I left the plant. I can recall that fellow reading the riot act to the fellows when the going was tough. We would be in the dressing room changing clothes, getting ready to come out of the plant and everybody would be bitching, "Hell, we might as well give up, we're never going to get anywhere with this outfit."

WILLIAM FINGER:

You're talking about the local union?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah. And Doc would walk the floor in the dressing room and say, "Give up? Hell! What do you mean, give up? The only way a working man ever got anywhere was to get hold of a little something. Get a hold of a little damn something and hang on like grim death until you can get some more. What the hell is the matter with you." And he was a foreman.

WILLIAM FINGER:

He was a foreman?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

He was a foreman.

WILLIAM FINGER:

That's strange.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, you run into a few like that.

WILLIAM FINGER:

I am interested, is Roanoke in the real mountains?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah, it's right in the foothills.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Had your parents been Republicans?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah, my father was.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did he have old Republican lines into … had they been in the mountains for a long time?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

We came originally from Patrick County in Virginia, which is way back in the mountains where you walk as far as you can walk and swing in on a grapevine, just way back in the hills. My father was a Republican and he was quite liberal and there were two things that he didn't mess with. One was his religion, he was a fundamentalist Methodist and a Republican and nothing was going to change him. He never tried to dictate to us, either. The result was that there were six of us kids and we grew up in all directions politically.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Were you the only Socialist?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah. My oldest sister was quite liberal, my oldest brother was Republican for all of his life up until the last five years or so when he up and quit the Republican party and turned Democrat. He said that he did it because the Republicans left him, that the Republicans were the liberals to start with at the beginning and …

WILLIAM FINGER:

I was getting ready to ask you if your father was a Harry Byrd Republican?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No, my father didn't think much of Harry Byrd.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Harry Byrd was a Democrat at first, but now his sons are

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Republican.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, my brother said that the reason he changed was over the Kennedys. He had a lot of admiration for Jack Kennedy and felt that the position he took on civil rights took a lot of courage and he decided that it was a better party for him. My father was always very good on the race question and all the kids, as a result, that's one thing that all six of us had in common.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did he talk to you about this?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No more than what he got in in his quiet way at home. We had some Negroes that lived in the neighborhood and they were good neighbors and if any one of us kids had used the term "nigger" at home, we would really have had the riot act read to us. My father just thought that was the worst kind of language at all to use and that in an area where that was about the only thing that you heard.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Were there any other families like your own that you knew of? When you went to school, what was it like?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

We were sort of a unique family back there in the mountains. My Dad was one of the few Republicans in the area and we were the only family in the neighborhood that took an outright position as far as civil rights were concerned. We were scared to death in World War I, the older kids were, that my Dad was going to get in jail because he was just as outspoken as could be in opposition to the war. He thought that it was a foolish and suicidal thing and the trouble was that he didn't care who he said it to.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did he make it public?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Oh yes, that was what had some of the older kids worried. He didn't go around on a soapbox, he wasn't that kind of a person, but

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he didn't hesitate to make known what he thought.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did your mother ever read to you?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Mother died before … I can just barely remember her.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And your father raised you?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Just him?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, he and the older children.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Older sisters?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You know, a lot of early labor organizers, older than yourself, people that organized in the teens, especially immigrants up North, their mothers read to them when they were young, they read Fabian stuff and the Woblies and everything. I was just curious where your father got this kind of ideas, it certainly wasn't from the community.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I never knew my grandfather, but apparently my grandfather was quite an exceptional individual. I think that he drank himself to death and my father always shook his head when I mentioned my grandfather, but there were just so many stories that they told about him. He had a mill over in the mountains, a grist mill and then he published a little old paper that he put out about once a month.

WILLIAM FINGER:

This is your father's father?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What kind of paper?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Just a chatty little old local thing. My father said that he had some of the neighbors mad at him all the time. If somebody failed to take care of his corn and just let it go to seed, Grandpa would

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have an item in the paper, "Go over and see Tim Boyd's corn field. It is a sight to behold." [Laughter]

WILLIAM FINGER:

Near Roanoke, that's where he lived?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well yes, back in the mountains, out from Roanoke.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So your father actually moved into the city from the hills.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Why did he decide to do that?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, he wanted the children to have a chance to go to school and there wasn't any chance back there in the mountains at all. There were no schools there. All of them except me and my oldest brother went to school.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Went to college?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Where did they go to college?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Washington.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Washington and Lee?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No, in Washington, D.C. at … I guess at Washington University. I know that they worked and went to school at the same time. I think it was Washington University.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And then one of your brothers went into business?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah, my oldest brother was a certified public accountant and then he went out of that into a loan shark business and retired ultimately.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And your sisters, did they get married? Did any of them have careers?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, my oldest sister was married and divorced, she is retired and the other two sisters are retired. They both worked in Washington all their lives. The youngest sister was General Hershey's

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confidential secretary.

WILLIAM FINGER:

That was during the war?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

During the war, yeah.

WILLIAM FINGER:

That must have been interesting.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

My sister next to her, my middle sister, worked for BNA, she worked for them until she retired.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Well, I was just interested in the kind of history of your past. Were any of the other children as aggressive in what they did?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No, I don't believe that they were.

WILLIAM FINGER:

They mostly left town and went off to college.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Tell me about the first Socialist meeting that you went to. I'm real interested in that, I've talked to H.L. Mitchell and some of the people that worked with Norman Thomas.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I believe that the first meeting that I can recall was just a handful of us at somebody's house, there was a fellow with the nickname of "West Virginia", "West Virginia" Duncan and a group of us met at his house and I don't recall the organizer that was in at that time. There was somebody helping us set up a local, but I just don't recall.

WILLIAM FINGER:

This was the Socialist Party?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah.

WILLIAM FINGER:

But it was working directly with your local union?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah. Well, no, not with the local union.

WILLIAM FINGER:

It was the local chapter …

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

It was the local chapter of the Socialist Party.

WILLIAM FINGER:

I see.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

There was a time when the local was set up that I would say the majority of their members were from over at the Viscose plant. I know that I got a dozen or so myself.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So, you recruited for the party and then also for the local union.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah. After that first time, when I was temporary president until we elected a president, from then on until I left the plant, I could always get elected, no problem at all getting elected, on the advisory committee and getting elected chairman of my department, which automatically made me a member of the executive board. But I could never get elected to a top office. There would be a hue and cry as far as two-thirds of the people in that plant were concerned, because there was no difference, Communists and Socialists were all the same. So, they would label me as a Red.

WILLIAM FINGER:

The local union people?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Oh yeah.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And they would keep you from winning?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

They would say, "Oh, he does a good job as chairman of his department but it would be too bad if he was president or business agent." I could never get elected to that.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you defend yourself, did you stand up and talk about the Socialist party …

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You just kept it quiet?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

As far as I was concerned, that was my business and it was

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never really covered at all very much. On down the line to the present time, I've noticed that a great many people that did covet the office did have to give up too much and climb over the top of too many people getting there, so I just never had that inclination.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What kinds of things would they have to give up?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, if you were a Socialist and you wanted to get elected to office, you had better become a registered Democrat in the South and I guess Republican in some other parts of the country. As far as the church is concerned and religion is concerned, you had better be a Baptist or a Methodist, you certainly wouldn't be a Unitarian like I am. That again would be two strikes against you. Working people are generally pretty set in their ways when it comes to things, they are conservative when it comes to politics and they are conservative when it comes to religion.

WILLIAM FINGER:

All through the years, you think that's the case?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah, I think so. They will do things, and in their actions be radical as hell, but at the same time, they will be saying, "I don't know, So-and-So is too radical." They don't equate their own actions with any kind of radicalism.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What helped you, I mean, you were a working person, what is different about you? You told me about your father, but what helps you to equate that, your activity there at the local union?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, I'm afraid that I'm not following you clearly. What do you mean?

WILLIAM FINGER:

Well, I'm just curious. Did you have reading groups that read literature?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

We had our own group. I had set up a group within the

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local that met once a week and it was basically a strategy planning sort of thing.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Educating yourself?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

We did some educational work and we had quite a bit of influence working that way. But we were a minority, but we were a minority that the factions in the local courted assiduously because we could make the difference, you know …

WILLIAM FINGER:

This was the local union?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah. I recall one man that was in my local, John Kabler, who was an extremely competent man and went on the staff of the union and died shortly after he retired a few years ago. John was one of the most knowledgeable about the industry that I ever met and he had a wonderful memory. He and I could never see eye to eye on anything. We fought all the time, he would be on one side and I would be on the other. I had what I suppose you would call a clique and John had clique and I recall one time that he came to my house and there was an election coming up and he said, "Joe, I know that you and I don't agree on anything, but I think that there is one thing that we can agree on and that is that"—he mentioned the name of another fellow—"is a menace to this organization and he has a chance of getting elected." I agreed and that was as far as I would go with him. He said, "Well, why don't we bury the hatchet temporarily and get up a slate and get rid of him and his clique and then we can go back to fighting again?" [Laughter] "We are not going to get along very long." I thought that it made sense and he was as good as his word. I supported him for business agent and he supported a girl that I was pushing for vice-president. My wife at that time was

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recording secretary and I was pushing for her for recording secretary. So, we put together a coalition and cleaned house pretty well and then went back to fighting again as soon as we got through with it. [Laughter]

WILLIAM FINGER:

Was your wife involved with the Socialist party as well?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I don't think that she ever … I think that she may have attended a meeting or so, but she was never an active party member.

WILLIAM FINGER:

How long did you remain active in the party?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Up until I left the plant. I attended a couple of meetings after I left the plant and went on the staff, but I never took an active part. As matter of fact, the local just withered and died on the vine and I got pretty thoroughly disillusioned myself and I recall that the last person that came to me was a person named Ken Douty who was an old Socialist friend and his wife was a very ardent Socialist. She came to me and wanted to know why I wouldn't get active again. I was pretty sarcastic about it and told her that if the Socialists would get one more damn plank in their platform besides fighting the Communists, I might get interested in getting back active again. I just got disillusioned because there were so many things to do on a day to day basis and all the Socialists could do was fight Communism. God damn it, we had plenty to do besides that.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Why was that such a big thing?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, it was quite a question of doctrine and I was in New York, while I was still in the plant, a friend of mine took me up to a meeting, Art Krager and MacDonald, some of the top Socialists of that time. So, I as suitably impressed, being invited to that kind of a meeting and we went to a swank apartment on Riverside Drive and we sat around there and …

WILLIAM FINGER:

Was Buck Kester there?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No, I don't recall him. But all that was done that night was just long discourses on the evils of the Communist party and the error of their theories.

WILLIAM FINGER:

But not on the evils of capitalism?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No. When we were going back to the hotel and this friend of mine asked me what I thought about it I said, "Well, to tell you the truth, I didn't hear them say a damn thing that was going to help put bread on anybody's table. It was just ‘Fight the Communists."’

WILLIAM FINGER:

What year was that, do you remember?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah, that would have been about 1938, somewhere along in there. I came out of the plant in 1939.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So, you stayed going to Socialist Party meetings the whole time, '31, '39, that era?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Off and on. The party itself, the local, just withered away in Roanoke.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What was the strongest, the greatest strength of the local?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

It would be hard …

WILLIAM FINGER:

Just roughly.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

You mean in numbers?

WILLIAM FINGER:

Yes.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

We had around sixty or sixty-five people.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did the Communist Party have a chapter there, too?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes. They tried to raid us. I recall that about the first contact that I had with the Communists, there was a professor down at the University of Virginia that I was pretty well acquainted

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with and he called me in Roanoke and said, "Be on the lookout because there is one of our campus Communists coming up and he is extremely able and may be looking you up." He told me what his name was, I don't want to mention it now because the guy is still getting around and doing a pretty good job, I understand. He calls himself Fred Cox, so that is what you will be hearing, but he has told me his right name. We were alerted and …

[Recorder is turned off and then back on.]

WILLIAM FINGER:

So, it was about '37?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah, '36 and '37. At any rate, he came to my house and knocked on the door and I came to the door and he said, "Fred Cox is my name and I'm with the Communist Party and I would like to talk with you." I called him by his right name and said, "Come in Mr.—" He looked a little bit puzzled at that.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Taken aback.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

We had a very nice chat but we wound up a little bit at odds. He knew about the group that I was working with and he began to tell me the strategy that we ought to be using.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Was your program primarily within the local union? Or was it a number of things?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, the group that I was working with, we had Socialists in it, we had Democrats, we had Republicans. It was just an active group. That was the group that the Communists were interested in filtrating.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did it have a name?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No, we just met as an activities group and we didn't call ourselves anything. But they had found out about us and found out

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that we had a little muscle.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What did you do?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

We met and discussed strategy primarily, in getting things done in the local. We managed to set up a real good local library there …

WILLIAM FINGER:

Local union?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Local union library. We got the finances from the local for stocking it, you know. We had some labor, various labor courses started and were able to bring in some people from the university and other places to teach labor history and so on. We were just an active group, pushing the local into taking on various activities.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did people from Brookwood come? Is that where you met Tom Tippett?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I think that we had someone, but it wasn't Tippett, I don't recall who it was. I know that we had a number of people in.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did A.J. Muste come?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I don't recall him.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So, you had labor schools and you had a library. Did you do anything with local politics?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No.

WILLIAM FINGER:

The county commissioners or anything?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Very little, except during the bad years of the Depression, we were active in working in conjunction with the YWCA and with other groups and working with the poor in the area, the people that were really in need. We had a committee set up, I was chairman of the committee that acted as liason between the local and the Workers' Alliance and the YWCA and the …

WILLIAM FINGER:

The Workers Defense League.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes, the Workers Defense League and all the various groups.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Was there an anti-poll tax committee there?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Oh, there was always somebody fighting the poll tax, there were perenniel fights on that.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did the YWCA head that up?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I would imagine that they probably did. My wife would know about that, she was more active with the Y group.

WILLIAM FINGER:

I might like to talk to her today, if that's possible.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, if she gets through with her nap in time.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Good. Were you working closely together at this point, while you were in the plant?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

While I was in the plant, yes.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Was she raising kids, or was she in the plant?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

She was in the plant, we weren't married until after she left the plant. I was organizing in Danville, Virginia, Dan River Mills, at the time that we got married. I think that the first time I ever noticed her, she had been recording secretary of the local, but I never paid any attention to her and then out of the clear sky one night, she got up and started off with a long speech …

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

… pointing out that there was no scientific difference between Negroes and whites and at that time, we had a Jim Crow local, we had all white and all black local.

WILLIAM FINGER:

She was pushing for an integrated local?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

She was pushing for … she wasn't going that far,

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she was pushing to invite the Negroes to attend our meeting. This was just out of the clear sky, she had done no preliminary work, she didn't know a thing about local politics and here she was sounding off, shooting the big guns to start with and I was sitting right next to the most respected member of the local, a fellow by the name of Lester Montgomery. Everybody respected him highly and Lester would do anything that I told him to do. So, I whispered to Lester, I said, "When she gets done talking, you make a motion that we receive the delegation of Negroes and I will second it." I got up and moved all the way across the room so they wouldn't connect me with Lester's motion. Well, when she got done, all hell broke loose. For a minute, there was silence and Lester jumped up and made his motion and I seconded it and then you would have thought that we had raped everybody's mother. You never heard such a bedlam.

WILLIAM FINGER:

This was '36?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

This was '35 or '36, somewhere along in there. It was a real knockdown, dragout fight. Of course, she got the hell beat out of her, we all did, the maker of the mtion and myself and everybody else was just howled all over the place. So, after the meeting, I walked up to her and told her that I admired her nerve for putting that on the floor, but, "By God, why didn't you get together with somebody, if you were going to do it, and do a little advance planning?" She was in tears, she didn't know what she was supposed to do. I said, "Well look, for Christ's sake, what we should have done was for somebody to get up and make the motion that you made to start with and then you let two or three other people make a speech and then you come up with that long winded speech of yours after the

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opposition has shot its wad, then maybe we would have a little chance of getting a few votes. You killed yourself right to start with." Right after that was when we decided to set up a group and start working and we did shortly after that. We pulled our group together.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You never had a name?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No. We were just a damn bunch of radicals, you know, and local ll, that was the name we had.

WILLIAM FINGER:

How big was the group?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

We would have, I would say, twenty that would be about the maximum. It would average around fifteen people a week. One time, we would meet in a swimming pool in the summer time and another time out in a field and they were often pleasant, social types of meetings. My wife was recording secretary and in an extremely good position to have us know what was going to happen because the local had agenda meetings a week before, five days before the membership meetings. So, five days before the membership meeting, we knew what was going to be on the agenda and we knew what positions we wanted to take there, whether to put anything on from the floor and so on.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So, you were primarily concerned with the policy and strategy within the local ll?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes, right.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Not with the general community and the Roosevelt Administration and …

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

We did a little bit of political work, but it was just as everybody else did in the local at that time and that didn't take up all of our time.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So, this isn't the same group that you were telling me about a little while ago that had Socialists and Democrats and …

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

This is the same group.

WILLIAM FINGER:

The same one?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes. I remember one time that I was writing to Clifton A. Woodrum, who was our Congressman and I wrote him a letter asking him to support passage of the Wagner Act when it was up for adoption. He wrote back and said, "Dear sir, when this act comes before the House, you may be sure it will receive my earnest consideration." A friend of mine worked for Standard Oil Company and Standard forced their people to send telegrams and letters opposing the passage of the act. This friend of mine showed me his letter that he received from Clifton Woodrum. It said, "My dear friend, when this act comes before the House, you may be sure that I will do everything in my power to sidetrack the bill. I got him to let me block his name out on it and give me his letter. I took it, got it photostated and gave copies to the Republican headquarters and went over to Covington, Virginia, where there were a couple of locals of paper workers and rayon workers and gave them copies and spread them around everywhere I could. I had Clifton running all the way back to Roanoke from Washington to tell me that he hadn't lied to me. He called me up and wanted me to come up to his office and I went up. He put in about a half hour trying to explain that he hadn't talked out of both sides of his mouth in those letters. He had to run all over the state as a result of that.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you ever consider running for Congress yourself?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No.

WILLIAM FINGER:

A lot of people ran as Socialists in the '30s.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah, a few people did. There weren't too many running, as I recall, on the Socialist ticket in my area.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Were there any?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Not … we had …

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you ever help get a candidate for something?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I don't recall any, to tell you the truth. Not in our immediate area. Now, there was one fellow that ran for something down at Richmond, but it was not in our voting area and I don't recall what he ran for now. The Communists always had somebody up.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Tell me some more about what you felt when they tried to infiltrate your local group.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I got very angry. This fellow that came to my house and tried to tell me first how we were to operate and finally, he wasn't getting very far with that, and he said, "Now, I've talked to your associates" and he named two girls that we were working very closely with and he said, "They both already agreed with me to go along with this program." That pretty well burned me up and I said, "Well, they are free and they can go with any program that they want to go with, but I will tell you this much, they are not going to be in my group if they are going to go with you. They can go with you, but they are out as far as I am concerned. As of now, if you are sure about it." Well, he started backtracking then, he saw that he had offended me, but I didn't have much more to say to him than I already had. As soon as he left, I called one of these girls and mentioned this guy and said, "I understand that you are going to go along with his program." She said, "Well, aren't you?" "Hell, no." "Well, he told me that you had already agreed to go along with it, that's the reason that I told him I would." I called this other girl and she told me the same thing. The only reason that they agreed with him was because he had told them that I had agreed. So then, the Socialist party was just about ready to fold and I took over the secretary's books, it was an elected secretary who had just quit and I took them over and had all the records

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and everything at my house and he wanted … no, it wasn't this guy, they sent in another fellow that was much more polished. He was also from the University of Virginia and he tried to smooth over the mistakes that Cox had made and he was a very pleasant guy. He tried his damndest to get those records that I had and tried to persuade me to give him some names, said that he wanted to do some organizing of our people. I told him that hell, we had a hard enough time running our own show.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What about the substance of the Communist party and the various organizing they did, and the Socialist party, besides those kinds of tactical things?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, they got some of the people, but I don't believe, come to think of it, I can think of about four or five people out of the group that I was working with that went over to the Communists, but I don't think there was a single one of them that was Socialist. They were just going along with our group and I don't know what their politics had been before.

WILLIAM FINGER:

But they also concentrated on the activities of the local union?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Oh yeah.

WILLIAM FINGER:

It must have been the main industry in Roanoke.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

That and the North and Western shops were the two main industries.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So, you were in the mill from '31 to '38?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

'39.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And you were involved in all these things in the town and in the middle of that came 1934, September 1st. Tell me about that.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, our local was not on strike, none of the synthetic fiber plants were on strike during the '34 thing. We went out and helped where

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we could, wherever the battles were raging.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Had you ever been on strike yourself?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No, never had. Oh, we had had a little quickies, but no strikes worth mentioning.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So, you had never been on strike yourself?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And you in fact didn't go out on strike on September 1st?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Not in the '34 strike, no. The synthetic fiber plants generally did not go out, although there were under contract and we had no strike provisions in the contract and really, the strike didn't involve that branch of the industry. It involved the cotton and manufacturing. You see, synthetic fibers don't manufacture anything, they just make the thread from a synthetic base, so they were not involved in the strike itself other than assisting in the thing.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Were you under a UTW contract at that time, or was it still kind of an independent …

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, we joined the UTW right after we … it must have been within three or four months after we got organized. We started shopping around and knew that we wanted to be affiliated with something. So, we joined the UTW.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And you had a contract?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

We had a contract before we joined UTW, the one that I told you about and we never got anything any better until TWOC came along. The Textile Workers Organizing Committee.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So, September 1st, something like 300,000 workers …

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

In '34, that's what you're speaking of?

WILLIAM FINGER:

Yes, in North and South Carolina and Georgia?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I would guess that it would be all of that. I don't really recall.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What do you recall about it? You said that you went over to Danville.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah, there were a bunch of us in the flying squadron that went over there and didn't get to Danville. We were stopped before we got there and turned around. A fellow by the name of George Moorhouse was the staff man at that time and he got a group of us, everybody that would go with him and went over.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Were you scared?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Not particularly, it was more of a lark than anything else. We got involved in one episode that got a little scary, as a matter of fact, one of our people went off the road and got killed coming back to Roanoke, at Hopewell, Virginia, where there is a Tubise-Chatillion plant. We took a flying squadron in there and they found out that we were coming and locked the gates. We had a bus, some of us went in cars, some in a bus and we pulled that damn bus up beside the fence and climbed up on it and went over the fence. We started going into the plant and told people that there was a strike on, "Come on and let's go." We didn't have an incident the whole time, there wasn't a lick passed and everybody just came right on out and closed it down. The management was so scared, they must have thought that we were a bunch of thugs. They had a Norfolk and Western boxcar on a siding and the management all loaded up in the boxcar and went out. There was an amusing aftermath to that. Many years later, I became joint board manager in Rome, Georgia at a Tubise plant, a former Tubise plant, now owned by Celanese. The man that was the labor relations

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representative was one of those that rode out of Hopewell in a boxcar.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Is that right?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

And the plant manager was one of them.

WILLIAM FINGER:

I guess that they had been transferred down.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Oh yes. I never mentioned a word about this incident in Hopewell until the strike. But before that, I had a meeting, one of the first meetings that I had with the company, when we got through with the grievance conferences, … the man that was the labor relations representative for the company was the biggest liar that I have ever heard talk. So, when we got through with the grievance conferences, he said, started reminiscening and said, "You know, up in Hopewell, that's where I came from, that was awful up there in '34, a bunch of thugs came over there with sticks and clubs and beat our people over the head and beat them into the floor and dragged them out of that plant." I sat there and let him tell me all about it, you know. There wasn't a lick passed.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you have sticks and clubs?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No. Some of the guys might have had something in their pockets but all we did was just go in and say, "Come on, let's go."

WILLIAM FINGER:

Tell me about a flying squadron. Where did you get your name?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

That was dubbed on to us for some reason, I guess by the newspapers during that period of time. We would just get a group together and pick a target and go on down. The picking was done by the organizer, the UTW organizer that was in charge. The rest of us just went for the hell of it.

WILLIAM FINGER:

How many people went to this Hopewell plant?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Oh, there must have been fifty of us.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And you didn't hesitate to climb over the fence?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You didn't think that there might be National Guard or State Troopers there?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, that's the chance that you take, you know that there is that possibility, but when you are that age and got a lot of stars in your eyes, well, you don't worry about that.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Were you married then?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did the organizer, Moorhouse, did he meet with you and explain about the strike all over and how this fit into the big picture? Did he try to do any education with you or anything like that?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I don't recall any.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You just climbed in and said, "Let's close this plant down." How many of those kinds of … would you call them "missions?" How many did you go on?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I wasn't on many of them. I went on that one and a couple of others. One that I would leave off the record, I think, but that was about it.

WILLIAM FINGER:

But you never got arrested?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Lots of people got arrested in Georgia.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, I got arrested lots of times, but not then.

WILLIAM FINGER:

I have never been to Roanoke, what other kinds of things between '31 and '38, during that period …Roosevelt was elected, you described your political activities in the local …what else happened that struck you, that pushed you along. The TWOC came into existence, is that the next thing that you remember?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I don't recall anything that stands out. When the TWOC was set up, that gave us a shot in the arm and that gave us more tools to work with than we had ever had before and we tried to capitalize on that. There was something that we always stayed busy with. I recall a furniture strike there that we all got wrapped up in, Johnson-Carper Furniture.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you coordinate with everyone in the town, kind of?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

There, we had a group from Viscose that as soon as we came off shift, we headed for the picket line and there were more Viscose workers on that Johnson-Carper Furniture strike than there were Johnson-Carper workers. I recall one incident there. There was an old gentleman up there that came out dressed like the Old Order Dunkards on the order of the Mennonites, with which you may be familiar with up North, with the wide brim hat. He came out there in that picket line and he got down on his knees in the dust and prayed for the strikers, said that their cause was just and he prayed for the Lord to help them win the strike, you know, and everybody thought that he was really top stuff. The next morning, the old bastard rode through the picket line and got a job, scabbed on them. It was one that the pickets got amused at. We were raising all kinds of racket around there and everybody was trying to go in and they spotted him and said, "There's that son of a bitch that was out here praying for us the other day." [Laughter]

WILLIAM FINGER:

That's funny. Well, when did you first hear of TWOC? Did you read about it in the paper?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

We knew about that, of course, because we were in the local

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and we were …

WILLIAM FINGER:

Getting the newspaper?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

We kept up with that and we were instrumental, the people in our union were instrumental in getting TWOC established to start with. We were well briefed on the conception of TWOC.

WILLIAM FINGER:

How did that happen? Did you go to meetings?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No, Sidney Hillman was one of the founders, Sidney Hillman, John Lewis, Emil Rieve were some of the top people, George Baldanzi … they were some of the top people that got together and Hillman was Amalgamated Clothing Workers and Lewis was the Mineworkers and they bankrolled the thing from its inception. It caught on. There was never any doubt in our minds as to what direction we were going, whether we were going with the TWOC or …

WILLIAM FINGER:

But you yourself in Roanoke, how did you do it? Did you go to meetings or …

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Oh yeah, every membership meeting there was pretty thorough briefings on the thing. As a matter of fact, this John Kabler that I mentioned had been elected, I believe, head of the old Dyers Organization and was bringing it in. So, we knew all about the thing step by step as it occurred.

WILLIAM FINGER:

At the local union level …

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I don't say that all the members knew about it, but everybody that attended meetings knew about it. We, in turn, were saying that this is the thing and that …

WILLIAM FINGER:

I just didn't know if at the local union level, there were discussions about it.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Oh, yes. As far as my local was concerned, and I assume

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that is true of other locals.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Then, so you had Hillman and Lewis and they made their committment?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes.

WILLIAM FINGER:

The organizing started and TWOC was set up.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

That was the first time that we ever had anything to work with, you know. TWUA, when it was established, had no money at all except borrowed money, or gift money from Amalgamated and the Mineworkers. I went on the staff at $25 a week, which was …

WILLIAM FINGER:

On the TWOC staff?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

TWUA. I went on the staff just following the constitutional convention in Philadelphia in '39 and I went on to stay for $25 a week, which was $7 a week less than I was making in the plant.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Who hired you?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

George Baldanzi.

WILLIAM FINGER:

How did you meet him?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, George and I had been friends for years. He had been down to Roanoke on a number of occasions and George, too, had been a Socialist and I had been to a meeting or two with him.

WILLIAM FINGER:

The Socialist party as well as UTW?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes, And then a couple of times, I had had a couple of hassles in Roanoke with some of the people and George had always come to my defense. We knew each other pretty well.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So, did he approach you about wanting to hire you or were you ready to get out of the plant?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, at the time, I was laid off at the plant.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You were?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes. They had had a curtailment and we had negotiated in the meanwhile a technological displacement provision so that if you were laid off in one plant and there was an opening in another plant, this company had seven plants scattered around and you could go to another.

WILLIAM FINGER:

There was a company-wide contract?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yeah. We had one of the first chain-wide contracts. So, I went on the staff and I hadn't been on it for more than two or three months and I got a call from Viscose offering me a job in Front Royale in a plant. I contacted the International, contacted Baldanzi to see if what I had was permanent or if it was part-time and he assured me it was permanent, so I passed it up and stayed on.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You mean, you had already started working for TWUA before this?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes, before I got called back.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So, he knew that you were out of work. Did you call him up and look for a job or did he come to you?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No, he wrote me a letter and offered me the job.

WILLIAM FINGER:

He knew that you were out of work?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So, I guess that TWUA had started. What did you think? Now, you were an organizer. You had been an organizer eight years there in your local, but this was a little different.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

This was a lot different.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What was different?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, we had a pretty civilized set-up there in Roanoke and when we started getting out in these cotton textile organizing situations, it was a lot less civilized.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You were organizing and going from place to place?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes, my first assignment, I believe, was up in Martinsburg, West Virginia and Winchester, Virginia. Winchester is where I got my education.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Why did you get your education there?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, nobody briefed me on what to do. Baldanzi called me and said, "Go down to Charlotte, North Carolina and see Fred Held and Fred will brief you on Winchester, Virginia and Martinsburg, West Virginia." I went down and …

WILLIAM FINGER:

This was your first assignment?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes. Fred was an old line hosiery worker. I went down to see Fred here in Charlotte and he briefed me on West Virginia and he said, "As far as Winchester, Virginia is concerned, stay the hell out of it." Of course, that got my curiousity up, so I went in there and made some contacts with fellows that were real go-getters, fellows who were real topnotch people. They were being pushed around something awful by that company. I had just come out of the plant, you know, I didn't know a damn thing about organizing. In the plant that I had come out of, you got ahold of management when they started pushing people around and had a meeting and told them to cut this stuff out. I picked up the telephone and called the plant manager and told him that I wanted that stuff cut out. He referred me to the company's lawyer. The company lawyer said, "Let's talk about it." He set up a meeting at the George Washington Hotel and I was staying in a little fleabag, the cheapest thing I could find, a few blocks away. I went up there to the hotel and he was just shocked that everything I described had been going on and said that he would put a stop to it and there was nothing to worry about.

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I left the hotel thinking, "Shoot, there ain't nothing to this job. All you have got to do is just tell them what the score is." It was dark as pitch going back to the hotel and there was an alley just before you got there and a couple of guys stepped out of the alley and came up to meet me just as I got close to it. I didn't pay any particular attention to them until they separated. The separated one on each side of me and they started swinging. I had a little flat briefcase and I was using it to try to knock the licks off and back-pedalling to the light, there was a street light not too far away and they didn't follow me into the street light. I got a little skinned up and my wristwatch broken, but didn't get hurt to speak of, but I decided then that it was going to be a pretty tough, damn job.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So what did you do, did you stay in Winchester?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes, I stayed. That was the only time that I ever got attacked. I had the opportunity to many times, but that was the only time. I thought that this was just the way it was. I didn't even bother to put it in my report. I went up to a hardware store the next morning and bought the best pocket knife that I could find and a whetstone and took it to the hotel and whetted it up to where I could shave with it and then thought, "Well, the next time that I go out in the dark, anybody that comes out of the alley, I'm going to get a little bit of meat while they are getting some." I would have to go up to that gate every midnight to meet the shift that came off and go up that dark street and as soon as I would step out of that old hotel, I would find something to whittle on and I would walk along whittling. [Laughter]

WILLIAM FINGER:

So, that was a deterrent to anyone.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, nobody ever … I don't know if it was the deterrent, but I was just never bothered. It was so obvious what happened, because nobody knew I was in town except the company and these fellows that I was taking up for. So, it was obvious that they had just set me up.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you get a local organized?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No, I got beaten. It was the first election that I ever had and I got the heck beat out of me. I got enough people to petition for an election, but I got beaten.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Was that discouraging?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Not too much, I was inexperienced. If I had had any experience, I might could have won that one, I don't know. I made plenty of mistakes.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did they keep you moving around then, on through the war years, or did you …

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

I moved from there to Carolina and the next nine elections I was in, we won all nine of them. And I went to Danville, that was the big one.

WILLIAM FINGER:

When was that?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

19 … I can tell you when I got in jail up there, it was 1942.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You didn't have to go out and go into the service?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

No, I went up and got examined and got turned down.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Physically?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes, I was 4-F.

WILLIAM FINGER:

When you went into this in Danville in the '40s, what was your feeling politically? When you went to work for the union in '38, '39, you had kind of dropped your affiliation with the Socialist party.

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Well, I suppose that you could say that I was a registered Democrat with Socialist leanings.

WILLIAM FINGER:

But all your time was spent with organizing?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Right. I didn't do any political work.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So, you just kept working and then you got involved in a big one in Danville?

JOSEPH PEDIGO:

Yes, that was the biggest one that we have ever had in the South, aside from Cannon up here. I don't know how