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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview
E-0011-1, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill”
Born in 1908, Joseph D. Pedigo was raised in Roanoke, Virginia, by a father who championed liberal ideas about race and class. In the late 1920s, Pedigo went to work for American Viscose—a synthetic fiber plant—where he soon brought his liberal ideas to bear. In 1931, he was among a small cohort of workers at American Viscose that began working towards the establishment of a union for the company's 4500 workers. Emphasizing the grassroots nature of their endeavors, Pedigo describes the challenges they faced in garnering a support base and how they succeeded in earning recognition of the local's collective bargaining power from the company. Pedigo worked at American Viscose until 1939, and over the course of the 1930s he remained an active participant and leader in the local union and became a member of the Socialist Party. He talks about the appeal of socialism and his adherence to radical politics; however, by the end of the decade, he had become disillusioned with the Party's singular focus on dissociating itself from the Communists, and he eventually cut ties with the Party. Pedigo also describes in detail his activities in the labor movement during these years, paying particular attention to his efforts at including African American workers in the union (an endeavor that ultimately brought him into contact with his later wife, Jennie Pedigo, who was also an active member of the movement) and his participation in flying squadrons during the 1934 general textile workers strike. In 1939, Pedigo was laid off from American Viscose and went to work for the newly formed Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA). Because of his active role in the local Roanoke union, he was well versed in the formation of national coalitions, such as the TWUA and the Textile Workers Organizing Committee (TWOC). Pedigo worked for TWUA as an organizer until 1952. In this interview, he focuses on several of his organizing endeavors, namely in Winchester and Danville, Virginia, and in Rome, Georgia. By the time he left the TWUA, he had developed a sophisticated organizing strategy that had been very successful in numerous areas. Pedigo concludes the interview by discussing how the Bandanzi-Rieve split affected the work of the TWUA and led to his being fired. Throughout the interview, he focuses on strategies and tactics in organizing textile workers and the role of various leaders in the movement.
Joseph Pedigo was an active participant and leader in the labor movement among textile workers in the South during the 1930s and 1940s. In this interview, he describes his role in the formation of a local union at American Viscose in Roanoke, Virginia, and his work with the Textile Workers Union of American towards organizing textile workers throughout the South.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
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?
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.
When were you born?
In 1908.
What kind of setting in Roanoke was your father from?
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.
Was he a member of the carpenters union?
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
So, your father hadn't talked about unions that much?
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.
You were ten or twelve years old?
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.
Were there many unions in Roanoke when you grew up?
At that time, we were the only ones. We started out from scratch in 1931 …
"We" is the Textile Workers?
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.
Did you go to college?
No.
You just worked in the area?
Right.
Did you go to high school?
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.
Well, tell me about how you first came to think about a union at all.
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
Did someone come to you and say, "Joe, why don't you come to a meeting on such and such a night?"
I think that it was the other way around.
You went to other people.
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.
About how many people were in the plant?
Well, there were 4500 people in the plant.
4500?
Yeah, at the time.
And you had never had any contact with the union and didn't know what a union was?
Didn't know a thing in the world about it except that we needed one.
You must have read about unions in newspapers.
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 …
Had you ever heard of 1929?
Oh, '29, sure.
You had heard about that when you were working in the plant?
Sure, everybody heard about that, the '29 and '30 battle.
Well, Danville isn't that far from Roanoke, is it?
No.
And there was a big strike in Danville.
Yes.
Did you feel kind of sympathetic to them?
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.
You did?
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.
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?
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.
Who owned the company?
American Viscose Corporation, it is now a part of FMC.
What did you make in those days, do you remember?
Rayon.
No, I mean, what kind of money?
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.
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.
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 …
They kind of had you in a bind.
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.
Seven people, in a plant of 4500?
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.
You were a pretty good bluffer for a young whippersnapper, weren't you?
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.
That's amazing.
It was just on his word.
This was 1931?
Yeah, '31. '32 was the first contract.
So, he signed a contract?
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.
It didn't specify any wages or anything?
No wages or anything, just recognition for such people as were members. But we lived and handled grievances and …
And you continued to meet with him and …
Oh yes.
You were president of the local?
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.
But even then, you kind of engineered that, though.
Yeah. He was the one I wanted.
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.?
I don't know, it was just a feeling that I had. Of course, at that time, I was pretty radical.
Had you read things? Did it come from your mother?
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.
How did you first hear of Norman Thomas?
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 …
That's a lot of strikes, isn't it?
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.
Is this before you were organizing the plant?
It was concurrent, really.
Well, how did you first meet Doc? Was it in the plant?
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."
You're talking about the local union?
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.
He was a foreman?
He was a foreman.
That's strange.
Well, you run into a few like that.
I am interested, is Roanoke in the real mountains?
Yeah, it's right in the foothills.
Had your parents been Republicans?
Yeah, my father was.
Did he have old Republican lines into … had they been in the mountains for a long time?
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.
Were you the only Socialist?
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 …
I was getting ready to ask you if your father was a Harry Byrd Republican?
No, my father didn't think much of Harry Byrd.
Harry Byrd was a Democrat at first, but now his sons are
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.
Did he talk to you about this?
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.
Were there any other families like your own that you knew of? When you went to school, what was it like?
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.
Did he make it public?
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
Did your mother ever read to you?
Mother died before … I can just barely remember her.
And your father raised you?
Yeah.
Just him?
Well, he and the older children.
Older sisters?
Yes.
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.
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.
This is your father's father?
Yeah.
What kind of paper?
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
Near Roanoke, that's where he lived?
Well yes, back in the mountains, out from Roanoke.
So your father actually moved into the city from the hills.
Yeah.
Why did he decide to do that?
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.
Went to college?
Yes.
Where did they go to college?
Washington.
Washington and Lee?
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.
And then one of your brothers went into business?
Yeah, my oldest brother was a certified public accountant and then he went out of that into a loan shark business and retired ultimately.
And your sisters, did they get married? Did any of them have careers?
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
That was during the war?
During the war, yeah.
That must have been interesting.
My sister next to her, my middle sister, worked for BNA, she worked for them until she retired.
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?
No, I don't believe that they were.
They mostly left town and went off to college.
Yeah.
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.
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.
This was the Socialist Party?
Yeah.
But it was working directly with your local union?
Yeah. Well, no, not with the local union.
It was the local chapter …
It was the local chapter of the Socialist Party.
I see.
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.
So, you recruited for the party and then also for the local union.
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.
The local union people?
Oh yeah.
And they would keep you from winning?
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.
Did you defend yourself, did you stand up and talk about the Socialist party …
No.
You just kept it quiet?
As far as I was concerned, that was my business and it was
What kinds of things would they have to give up?
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.
All through the years, you think that's the case?
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.
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?
Well, I'm afraid that I'm not following you clearly. What do you mean?
Well, I'm just curious. Did you have reading groups that read literature?
We had our own group. I had set up a group within the
Educating yourself?
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 …
This was the local union?
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?"
Was your wife involved with the Socialist party as well?
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.
How long did you remain active in the party?
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.
Why was that such a big thing?
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 …
Was Buck Kester there?
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.
But not on the evils of capitalism?
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."’
What year was that, do you remember?
Yeah, that would have been about 1938, somewhere along in there. I came out of the plant in 1939.
So, you stayed going to Socialist Party meetings the whole time, '31, '39, that era?
Off and on. The party itself, the local, just withered away in Roanoke.
What was the strongest, the greatest strength of the local?
It would be hard …
Just roughly.
You mean in numbers?
Yes.
We had around sixty or sixty-five people.
Did the Communist Party have a chapter there, too?
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
[Recorder is turned off and then back on.]
So, it was about '37?
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.
Taken aback.
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.
Was your program primarily within the local union? Or was it a number of things?
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.
Did it have a name?
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
What did you do?
We met and discussed strategy primarily, in getting things done in the local. We managed to set up a real good local library there …
Local union?
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.
Did people from Brookwood come? Is that where you met Tom Tippett?
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.
Did A.J. Muste come?
I don't recall him.
So, you had labor schools and you had a library. Did you do anything with local politics?
No.
The county commissioners or anything?
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 …
The Workers Defense League.
Yes, the Workers Defense League and all the various groups.
Was there an anti-poll tax committee there?
Oh, there was always somebody fighting the poll tax, there were perenniel fights on that.
Did the YWCA head that up?
I would imagine that they probably did. My wife would know about that, she was more active with the Y group.
I might like to talk to her today, if that's possible.
Well, if she gets through with her nap in time.
Good. Were you working closely together at this point, while you were in the plant?
While I was in the plant, yes.
Was she raising kids, or was she in the plant?
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 …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
… 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.
She was pushing for an integrated local?
She was pushing for … she wasn't going that far,
This was '36?
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
You never had a name?
No. We were just a damn bunch of radicals, you know, and local ll, that was the name we had.
How big was the group?
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.
So, you were primarily concerned with the policy and strategy within the local ll?
Yes, right.
Not with the general community and the Roosevelt Administration and …
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.
So, this isn't the same group that you were telling me about a little while ago that had Socialists and Democrats and …
This is the same group.
The same one?
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.
Did you ever consider running for Congress yourself?
No.
A lot of people ran as Socialists in the '30s.
Yeah, a few people did. There weren't too many running, as I recall, on the Socialist ticket in my area.
Were there any?
Not … we had …
Did you ever help get a candidate for something?
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.
Tell me some more about what you felt when they tried to infiltrate your local group.
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
What about the substance of the Communist party and the various organizing they did, and the Socialist party, besides those kinds of tactical things?
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.
But they also concentrated on the activities of the local union?
Oh yeah.
It must have been the main industry in Roanoke.
That and the North and Western shops were the two main industries.
So, you were in the mill from '31 to '38?
'39.
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.
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
Had you ever been on strike yourself?
No, never had. Oh, we had had a little quickies, but no strikes worth mentioning.
So, you had never been on strike yourself?
No.
And you in fact didn't go out on strike on September 1st?
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.
Were you under a UTW contract at that time, or was it still kind of an independent …
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.
And you had a contract?
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.
So, September 1st, something like 300,000 workers …
In '34, that's what you're speaking of?
Yes, in North and South Carolina and Georgia?
I would guess that it would be all of that. I don't really recall.
What do you recall about it? You said that you went over to Danville.
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.
Were you scared?
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
Is that right?
And the plant manager was one of them.
I guess that they had been transferred down.
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.
Did you have sticks and clubs?
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."
Tell me about a flying squadron. Where did you get your name?
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.
How many people went to this Hopewell plant?
Oh, there must have been fifty of us.
And you didn't hesitate to climb over the fence?
No.
You didn't think that there might be National Guard or State Troopers there?
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.
Were you married then?
No.
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?
I don't recall any.
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?
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.
But you never got arrested?
No.
Lots of people got arrested in Georgia.
Well, I got arrested lots of times, but not then.
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?
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