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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-0013, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
Born in 1909, Lawrence Rogin grew up in New York with Russian Jewish immigrant parents. Rogin begins the interview by briefly discussing his family background, stressing the involvement of his parents and his aunt in radical politics. In 1926, Rogin entered Columbia University and became active in communist and socialist clubs on campus. In the process, he became increasingly interested in the labor movement and its association with radical politics. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, while he was finishing graduate work in political science, Rogin began to participate directly in the labor movement. He discusses his work at the Brookwood Labor College in Katonah, New York, and with the Central Labor Union in Reading, Pennsylvania. It was his experience with these two organizations that gave Rogin a firm foundation in labor education. Around 1937, he accepted a position with the Hosiery Workers' Union, and he began to help organize hosiery workers throughout the South. He continued in this position until 1956, during which time he was primarily based in Charlotte, North Carolina. He describes his initial perceptions of the South, his thoughts on the state of the textile industry in that region, and labor education workshops held throughout the South. In addition to outlining mill conditions and assessing particular strikes, Rogin describes the leadership role of such activists as Emil Rieve, George Baldanzi, Scott Hoyman, Alfred "Tiny" Hoffman, Myles Horton, Joe Pedigo, and Roy Lawrence. After leaving the Hosiery Workers' Union in 1956, Rogin worked as the education director of the AFL-CIO and taught at Wayne State University. He concludes the interview with a brief assessment of the importance of labor education and its neglect by the American labor movement.
Larry Rogin grew up in the Northeast in an immigrant family inclined toward radical politics. In the 1930s, Rogin became actively involved in the labor movement. In this interview, he describes his work in labor education, focusing specifically on the Brookwood Labor College, the Central Labor Union, and his work with the Hosiery Workers' Union in the South.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Larry, I'd like to get a little early background to put your career in perspective.
On me?
Yes, just on you. Where did you come from?
Well, I came from the East. And in a sense I suppose I'm a New Yorker—that is, I come from an immigrant Jewish family which lived in New York. But in my youth I didn't live in New York. I lived in New York part-time, in upstate New York near the Canadian border, for about eight years; and then after a few years in New York, out on a farm which my grandfather had in New Jersey near New Brunswick. So I'm a New Yorker with a different perspective, small town perspective, farm perspective. Went to college in New York and graduate school. And later on, after the textile workers (which was the longest period, I guess, at one job), headquarters were in New York. So I'm kind of a New Yorker, but not really.
Where did your father come from?
He came from Russia; came from Mogelev, I guess. That's in White Russia; it's on the invasion routes that everybody's used that went into Russia.
Your mother was…
My mother was from there; they were cousins. My father came to this country. He was the oldest son, and he wanted to avoid the Czar's army, because it wasn't a thing for a Jew to be in the Czar's army. He came over. My mother…
When was that, when he came over?
Oh, let's see: must be around 1890, I guess, very early—he was an early immigrant, as most of it was about ten years later or thereabouts. My mother came a little later (not much); they weren't married in Russia. Her whole family came; they were mostly sisters, and two brothers. And I guess that's where my interest in social problems comes from (radicalism, or whatever you want to call it), because my mother, my mother's sister was an anarchist and ran a vegetarian restaurant in New York.
Really? This is at the turn of the century?
No, this would be around the First World War, right after the First World War. I remember it; I was born in 1909. I remember that, going down with my cousin (her son) who is a historian. Val Lorwin his name was.
What did you say? She was…
She had one son who was a historian, yes. But I remember that because, even though I was fairly young at the time of the First World War, we came down to New York City from Malone, which was a town in upstate New York, just about that time. And in the coming over here the sisters both decided to be Rose —they were something different in Russian, I'm not quite sure what it would be. And so whatever was the security agency during the First World War was busy watching a Rose Rogin. My aunt had gone off to Cuba, and my mother and father (as I said) were cousins, so she had the same maiden name as his. And so they used to come and check up on us regularly.
The security, like the FBI?
FBI, I don't remember what it was. I guess it was before the FBI.
Because you were Russians, or because of activity?
No, because of my aunt's anarchism; she was a known anarchist, a friend of Emma Goldman's, Johan Most and all. So that's why they were… And it wasn't 'til she got back into the country that my mother informed the security people that they had the wrong Rose Rogin. My grandfather, my mother's father, … well, I guess all of the family was more or less radical. My mother's father was rather radical. So this was kind of in the tradition of the family. And the farm which I was raised on, my mother ran a boarding house there for a while; my mother and father were separated. So anyway, this was the fund-raising location for all the Communist causes in the area.
Up there on the farm?
Up there on the farm, in the apple orchard. We freed the Scottsboro boys, and raised money for the I.L.D., and the Workers' International Relief and the I.W.O. and the Communist party, I guess, all through the summer, those summers I was there.
This was your father's…?
My mother's father.
So he stayed very active with the Communist party?
Well, I don't ever think he was a member, but he was generally
sympathetic towards the combination of Russian-American politics, for
working groups is always very mixed up. He was anti-czar, which was
common, but still a Russian nationalist. So when somebody in Russia put
the czar out of business he was generally sympathetic. And this was true
of a number of members of the family. Her mother never went that far.
She had a lot of anarchist friends—as I said, my aunt was an
anarchist—and so when they were killed by the Communists, or
expelled or whatever, we reacted against Daily Worker. And I
figured you couldn't build anything worthwhile on lies, and
so I quit——not because I didn't believe
in the revolution or whatever. Then somewhat later I decided to join the
Socialist party—this was in the fall of '28. By
'28 I was in a small Socialist club at Columbia and I ran a
"Thomas for President" campaign there. And I began to
think: you know, if you looked around the world you saw that there were
no successful radical parties (Communist or Socialist) that
didn't have a labor movement attached to them. So I began to
think that was a real problem in this country, was the character of the
labor movement, and I became involved in the Conference for Progressive
Labor Action.
In the what?
Conference for Progressive Labor Action. You don't know that?
Well, that was a kind of a … it's very hard to
say. It was not political, in the sense that it was not Communist or
Socialist (although there were Socialists and Trotskyites and others in
it). But it was a kind of a group that felt that the labor movement
needed reforming: you needed industrial unions, and you needed political
action, you needed activism, so on and so forth. * Not guardian ** Referring to Budenz, not Muste, who was never a Communist
Before we go on let me ask you… I'm still interested in the apple orchard in upper New York.
No, in New Jersey: New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Your father was a farmer?
No, my father was a druggist; my grandfather was a farmer.
So your father moved from…
No, my father and mother were separated at that time, and I lived with my mother.
First in upstate New York?
Well, then we were together, and then that's when my mother left. But she came back to New York for a while. And he came back to New York and had a drug store in New York, which he kept until he died.
How many brothers and sisters did you have?
Two older sisters.
Did they go into the activist movement?
No. My oldest sister (she's ten years older than I am), she
joined the Socialist party, I guess right after the First World War. We
* My sister
The family influence stayed with all of you.
All of us, yes. I guess there was one Socialist vote in 1916 in Malone, and I guess my father was responsible for it—although he was not an activist. I was too young; I don't remember him discussing politics at all. The family separated in 1917, and I was eight years old.
So you went from Columbia to Brookwood?
I went from Columbia, yes. I wanted to be a college teacher—a
proper Jewish family. My father wanted me to be a doctor, and I
negotiated with him away from doctor to lawyer, and then negotiated with
him to graduate school. There wasn't much; you
couldn't get any jobs going to graduate school in those days.
I graduated from college in '29, and so if you…
Although I would think that tuition was so low that it was just as easy
as it is now, with the grants they have. In any event, I wanted to be a
college teacher. And in those days you did your graduate work and passed
your exams, and then you got a job and wrote your
dissertation—sometimes you got done ten years later. My son
went through graduate school in a hurry and got his degree in four
years, and so on and so forth, but in any event it didn't
happen in those days. When it came to getting a job, I'd been
very active on campus, as I indicated: I was there in '28, I
was there again in '32, and there
You ran it for New York City?
No, for Columbia, just on campus. There was I'd been active in
various pacifist activities. So it got to getting a job after you finish
your graduate work. I passed my exams, and what I've since
referred to as the "business agent for the graduate
students," the guy who got jobs, called me in and he said,
"Now, I've got a job for you, but you'll
have to promise not to be active in the community as much as you have
been. We're not worried about what you'll teach
and so on; if we were worried about what you would teach we
wouldn't recommend you." It was at William and Mary,
and I guess he was probably right. In any event, I was young, and anyway
if you got a job it didn't pay very much; and so I
wouldn't do it, I wouldn't agree to promise that
I'd behave. And about the same time there was a split up at
Brookwood. The Conference for Progressive Labor Action, with Muste as
the head of it, had decided to have it be political, not just a reform
group in the labor movement. And Brookwood started to be a general
training center for workers, for general things. It's not for
the labor movement, because the A.F. of L. frowned on it and boycotted
it; but there were other unions that sent people there, and radical
groups sent people there, and so on. Instead of being a general training
center, it got to be a training center for the American
Workers' Party, which the C.P.L.A. and the Trotskyites got
together and formed. And so that meant that there was a sharp division
at Brookwood. Most of the students and office help went with Muste, but
the board (the makeup of the board was such that the union
representatives controlled) didn't go with Muste, and most of
the faculty
They suggested to her?
Well, there was a friend who had been working there —and, as a matter of fact, is somebody that had been at Brookwood and was at Brookwood when Tom Tippett was there, and was down South on some of the Brookwood things. You've probably got that from some other sources.
'29; that was '29.
'29, '28.
Was he still there when you… ?
She. No, she wasn't at Brookwood. Kathryn Pollock, her name was.
Oh, I didn't know. I didn't know that was a pseudonym.
No, it wasn't a pseudonym.
Tom…
No, I say was with Tom Tippett. Tippett was there, and then others. You see, Brookwood did all kinds of things in the South in the late twenties and early thirties. Tippett was the extension director and traveled; he was a coal miner from southern Illinois. The Marion strike was… There were other groups involved in the Emergency Pay for Strikers Relief, and so on, but Brookwood was the…
What was the … I missed the woman's name, Kathryn… ?
Pollock, her name was: now Kathryn Ellikson.
Were you involved in any of those earlier
No. When I came up to Brookwood that was all past. I came up in
'33, and really it was my wife who was working there. And I
was hanging on; I was supposed to be working on a doctor's
dissertation, and I was going to go ahead with it. But I also did some
volunteer work in the extension division. Mark Starr, who was later
education director of the International Ladies' Garment
Workers' Union, was the extension director. Went out with him
on some things.
What was your dissertation? What was your field?
What was I going to do? I was working on (never finished) "Labor and Politics in Pennsylvania From 1918 (that's the end of the World War) Up Through To the New Deal."
To the present?
Well, it was the present; yes, it was '33, sure. But the New
Deal would have made a cut-off point. And you had quite interesting
things
So you were in political science?
Political science, yes.
So you went to Reading; took the job there?
Took the job there; worked there for a couple of years. And while I was working there I got a job on the newspaper, because money was running short at the Central Labor Union, so I had to work on the newspaper. Got to the constitution-writing convention of the Newspaper Guild, I believe when we wrote the constitution. And then Brookwood again: I went on the faculty of Brookwood more formally in '35, and was on the faculty for two years. And I was the last faculty guy to leave Brookwood when it closed up.
Is that right?
Yes.
What went on at Brookwood those last two years?
We had some great training; particularly the '35-'36 year we had a tremendous group of students. A high percentage of them ended up in the labor movement: a lot of them professionals, others staff positions. A lot of students.
Students from all over?
Well, heavily auto industry. '33 Roy Reuther was there, and
Merlin Bishop. Merlin Bishop was the first education director of the
U.A.W.; came back from Brookwood and he was education director. Both of
them had been active in trying to build a union with the A.F.L. there.
And then just because, I guess, Roy was there (my memory for dates
doesn't work out), Walter
It was kind of a gathering-place.
Gathering-place, but also we had some quite remarkable faculty: David Saposs was there in '33-'34—well, he was there the first year I was there, and left in '36; Joel Seidman was there; and Lazar Teper, who later became research director of the I.L.G., was there. And in general during that period (see, this was the period of the formation of C.I.O.) you'd get up for speeches, and arguments among the student body, and all kinds of things … you were kind of up on what was going on in the labor movement.
Did you ever have any contact with your kind of southern counterpoints,
Highlander or Senator? 4
* Southern School for Workers? Commonwealth
Yes, Highlander and, to a more limited extent, Commonwealth. But I had more contact with Highlander when I went South for the … see, I really went South first for the Hosiery Workers' Union.
What about the Southern Summer School for Women Workers?
With them too when I was with Hosiery Workers'. We would have a conference there. We used to use Highlander for conferences, and we used to use the Southern Summer School for Women Workers for conferences when we'd be for the Hosiery Workers during that period.
But at Brookwood there were no formal kind of faculty exchanges.
There were not faculty exchanges. It was some efforts to do some joint fund-raising and things like that, but I don't recall that. That's not so vividly in my mind as the other things, the contacts I had with them later
So how did the Brookwood years kind of push you?
Well, while I was in Reading the big union in Reading was
"Tiny" Hoffman?
Alfred Hoffman.
Alfred Hoffman, yes.
Are you familiar with him?
I know that name, yes.
Because he really was the sparkplug for that early organizing that was non-communist.
He was at Elizabethton too then, huh?
He was at Elizabethton too, right. I'm not sure, I don't think he was at Danville. But he was at Elizabethton.
He and Tippett were kind of down there together from Brookwood?
No, he wasn't from Brookwood. He was a Brookwood graduate, but
he was an organizer for the Hosiery Workers'.
Is that right?
Yes, that's right. And, of course, the industry was moving South. And a knitter in the South was clearing probably about ?2,500. a year, which wasn't very good.
Oh, you mean a knitter up North was making…
Yes, unionized, in Reading, Pennsylvania; Northampton, Massachusetts; Fall Plain or wherever it was; Milwaukee. They were a union which really cared about trying to organize the industry. When I went to work for them they were paying five percent of their earnings in dues each week, which was a lot; it was two percent was the normal dues, and three percent was an organizing fund.
And that mostly went South?
That mostly went South—but not all. It went to Reading first, because Reading was unorganized. Reading was organized in the New Deal; there was no organization in Reading. But there were in an industry that had a very short life, really; it only lasted from (oh, in any mass sense) from about 1919 until 1941.
1919 to 1941?
Short skirts up to the end of silk stockings;
What was his name?
His name was Rieve, R-i-e-v-e; he was in the Textile Workers, yes. He was fired when he was fourteen helping organize the plant in Reading, and to follow him as I did… I did educational work for the union, and I'd go to all the other places in which he had come in and organized. I worked with him very closely for a long time, and I can't imagine him organizing anybody—but obviously he did.
Soft-spoken, was he?
No, but he was not a person that could communicate easily with others. He was not … partly the accent, partly, I guess maybe it could have been in Polish—although he was German and Polish. He came from Poland but he was really German, in the sense that his family moved there about a couple of hundred years before. So anyway…
Did you know him when you worked for the hosiery workers, then?
Yes, I knew him from Reading, because Reading was a big hosiery center; that was the big union. I also knew him from my dissertation, because he was a Socialist, and in 1932 he was head of the Thomas for President Labor Committee. There was in '33 a Continental Congress for Economic Reconstruction in Washington, which was Socialist trade union … various groups.
Congress for Economic Reconstruction?
Continental Congress for Economic Reconstruction.
Who convened that?
Well, the Socialists were the moving force, but there were more there,
and he was the chairman of that. And I had met him originally when I, I
guess in around 1932 or something, went down to a Pennsylvania
Federation of Labor meeting for the dissertation I was working on. I had
met him in Philadelphia (done some interviewing in Philadelphia for
that), and happened to
Was he the one that kind of got you to go on in '37?
Oh yes, I wanted to. That was my job.
Brookwood was over with.
Brookwood was over——no
money——and so I needed a job, and I was going to
have a baby. I suppose I could have gone to Washington and try to get a
government job, but I didn't want to. I still had this notion
that they could get a radical party in the United States if they changed
the labor movement. The C.I.O., of course, had been formed in
'35; really, it was very
Did Lewis ever come to Brookwood? John L. Lewis?
No. John L. Lewis was one of those who was responsible for the A.F.L.
blacklisting Brookwood, because in general, you see, you remember John
L. Lewis in '27 (I think it was) that Brophy ran against him.
And Brophy was counted out as president … that is, we presume
he was counted out. See, if you have a labor movement which
doesn't have much education in it, (that's always
been the case in the American labor movement), your education tends to
attract the dissidents. It attracts some others too, but it surely
attracts the dissidents. It's been always one of the problems
of all those labor education programs. And, in a sense, it's
inevitable; the people who are involved in labor education are dissident
in one way or another, if the labor movement doesn't believe
really in labor education—as our labor move-
They did?
They did.
Hum. The ones from Illinois?
From Illinois, the ones from the anthracite. When I went up there the first time with my wife there'd been a kind of gathering together of old Brookwood graduates who didn't have jobs—and there were a lot of them that didn't have jobs—to help get over the crisis period. And one of them was a chap who was the president of a miners' local in anthracite; Leo Sitko his name was. And he couldn't get a job in the anthracite because he was kind of blacklisted. You know, there was that kind of thing. So we tended to get the dissidents. And, of course, Tom Tippett attracted the dissidents, in a sense, too.
What kind of guy was Tippett? Did you know him?
I didn't know him so well then. I knew him, but I didn't know him so well. He was a very interesting man: soft-spoken…
Charismatic type?
No. Muste was a charismatic man, really very charismatic.
Like with, you know, a sparkle in his eyes?
Oh yes, oh more than a sparkle. It was a true believer kind of thing, at that period. Now, later on… See, this was the period when he had left the church and gone to the labor movement, and, yes, it was kind of a true believer. But Tippett attracted people, but not charismatic in the sense of publicly charismatic; privately charismatic, as people he worked with all got to worship him, and things like that.
Because he had insight, or because he worked hard?
Insight, worked hard, warm, very decent man as an individual, and all that kind of thing. I got to know him better later. See, feelings were very strong when I went up to Brookwood, and they stayed strong for the two years that I stayed. '33 I didn't stay in Brookwood, but they were quite strong then, because it had been a sharp battle and a rough thing. So he wasn't around at all in that period. I knew him a little through C.P.L.A. before. I got to know him better when he later on became education director of the International Association of Machinists. But by the time I came to Washington to the A.F.L.-C.I.O. he was out; he had retired. He was sixty-five and he was out in Seattle for a lodge of the machinists of Boeing, and was doing education work for them.
So you'd see him down South? In '37?
Well, he went South. '38 I guess I made my first trip South.
So you didn't work with the T.W.O.C. at all then, did you?
I worked with the T.W.O.C… no. By the time I was… Well, the hosiery workers were part of the T.W.O.C.
The hosiery workers were part of it, then.
They were an affiliate of the U.T.W., originally; they were a separate
union. But the U.T.W. was a very ineffective national union, and so if
you wanted to be effective there were the federations. One was the
hosiery workers and the others were the dyers. The hosiery workers were
effective all through the twenties; the dyers became effective in the
thirties with the New Deal. The hosiery workers split in the
twenties—split in 1919,
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
What's the first thing you remember coming South? Had you ever been South before?
I'd never been South before; I'd never been further South than Washington.
You had heard the southern situation discussed at Brookwood?
Oh yes, we had southern textile workers and … some blacks from the South at Brookwood, and so, you know, there was talk about it. And one of the fellows that came out of Marion I got to know, and I guess I got to know a gal that came from Knoxville, both of whom had been at Brookwood a little bit. And I talked to them; I got some feel of it from them.
What were their names?
It was Larry Hogan (and I was often mistaken for him) and Helen Gregory. And Larry Hogan was probably killed by somebody running his car off the road when he was organizing for the hosiery workers, before I went to work for them. He was up to Brookwood, as graduates tended to come up—Helen Gregory the same. But she came out of Knoxville, a Knoxville hosiery plant.
It was pretty tough going, then, when you
It was tough going when I came down. The hosiery workers had had
organizers in the South; U.T.W. had organizers in the South. And a lot
of people that were around Philadelphia had southern experience.
"Tiny"
Eddie Callaghan?
Eddie Callaghan; have you come across his name?
No.
Philadelphia hosiery boarder he was, by occupation.
Most of my work's been a little later, but that's interesting.
Yes, so they talked to me about it. And, of course, there had been the general strike. I had been in Reading during the general strike, working for the Central Labor Union, but we had the hosiery industry there and some textiles there.
Did they go out there too?
Well, the general strike was supposed to be a general strike, but the
hosiery workers weren't about to give up … they
had contracts in these plants, and they weren't about to give
them up, because they had spent too many years and too many dollars and
too many lives organizing them. But the textile workers, the U.T.W. did
call out its plants that had contracts, and we had something like four
contracts before the strike and one afterwards,
But the general strike was considered to be a northern…
Oh, it was.
You know, there were flying squadrons up North?
Oh yes. If you went up later on… When I went up… I got work for the Textile Workers, and I went up into New England and went into New Bedford-Fall River; I don't know how many people told me they'd been over to Mount Hope Finishing and been stopped by the machine guns up on top of the roof of the plant. Just as much.
That was in New Bedford?
Near Fall River, yes. Fall River-New Bedford flying squadrons, oh yes. But in any event, so I had something … I did understand something of it. And I guess I'd seen lots of poverty, but I never saw anything like that: never saw wages like they were. But a southern hosiery worker (that's who I was associating with) was making fifty bucks a week in those days; this was before the minimum wage law. And his brother who was working on a cotton mill was making maybe, for a longer work week—what would he be making?—at the most…
Eighteen?
Eighteen, twenty, twenty-four if he was a machine-fixer. * These wages appear high to me now—probably should be
12-14-18 if a loom fixer
Why did the hosiery worker make so much more?
Because it was a profitable industry. And it was enough more than the others so that they would keep them from organizing.
Was it higher skilled work too?
Over the years I've become convinced that skill has very
little Any textile worker, because
it's really more skilled. Now, the work isn't as
bad, but they're more skilled: you've got to be
able to tie a weaver's knot or you can't weave;
and, you know, you've got to be able to do all that. Any
textile worker.
Do you think many people would agree with you?
I think so, sure, sure. I worked out there for three years in Michigan and, yes, they would agree with me. It's a function of the industry, it's a function of the union and so on.
But the hosiery workers, were their rates the same as the cotton mill worker?
The ones in the South were. * Incorrect—full-fashioned hosiery wages were at least
twice, probably three times cotton mill wages.
You worked on the Golden Belt campaign?
No, that was not a campaign at that time; when I went South the Golden Belt was a Labor Board case. It was a Labor Board case that was just getting settled. And Cedric Stallings, who was the fellow who was fired in that campaign, was…
Bringing the case?
Well, yes, they had the case; but he'd been put on as organizer.
Was he for TWOC or for hosiery?
Well, it was hosiery; he was a hosiery worker there. TWOC had most of Golden Belt because there was a bag plant, a printing plant and God knows what else. But the reason it got organized was because there was a hosiery mill there, and the hosiery workers organized it.
So it was, technically, two different bargaining units then?
No, it was all one bargaining unit; there were separate locals and all
kinds of things like that but—I'm trying to think:
were there separate units? It was all one Labor Board case, and we
settled it at the time. It was American Tobacco Company in the local,
and that's why they signed the contract. You see, it
wasn't a major concern of theirs. They thought they were
going to make a lot of money in hosiery; they discovered that it was
much more difficult than they imagined. Burlington Mills a little later
on (I was still with the hosiery workers) put an awful lot of money into
setting
What was the name of it?
Mock Judson-Voehringer, and Oscar Nebel in Charlotte, and others: they made money out of hosiery, all right.
How long were you down South organizing?
Oh, I was off and on. I was South probably a quarter of every year, at least, for … from the time I went South for the hosiery workers until '57—well, really '56, '56. It would be about, almost about eighteen years, twenty years.
You went with TWU4 about… ?
In '42, in January, '42.
That's when the merger… ?
No, Rieve had become director or president of T.W.U.A. in '39;
that's when T.W.O.C. became T.W.U.A. But he wanted me to come
up to New York for T.W.U.A. right along, but at the time he went up they
weren't in any shape to have an education program.
I've been involved in organizing and education, but
I've always kind of stuck to education as the trade. But in
'42 when he asked me to come up I went up; late
'41 he asked me and I went up. * Rieve became director of TWOC in 1937; President of TWU4 at its
first convention in 1939.
So the hosiery hadn't merged in?
No, they didn't merge in. As a matter of fact, they split off later on. A lot of the leadership of the textile workers came out of the hosiery workers, because this was the branch of the union that knew what it was all about; that is, in which they had some skills, and because it was a high-paid industry you also had some natural sifting in the employment process, and so on. But the hosiery workers in the South were not independent, in the sense as I told you, T.W.O.C. became on it. But it didn't work out very well, and hosiery started to run its own affairs more. But I guess the second impression I had in the South was that (you always had hope, and so on) it was already too late, because the '34 strike had taken place before the C.I.O. was formed. And the '34 strike, as you know, was a big strike. It's almost forgotten now, but you tell people there were half a million, six hundred thousand people out on strike in '34 (I guess the biggest strike the country's ever known); it was like a revolution, you know.
For three weeks.
For three weeks, that's like a revolution. And then it got sold down the river, I guess, by Mr… Well, it should have never been called, of course, because there was no labor movement to receive it, to support it, to receive it. Frank Gorman didn't know how to run a strike, and he didn't know how to settle a strike. And the A.F.L. really couldn't care less.
It's been all, so, that bad?
Oh yes. There was a guy who was an organizer; I've forgotten
his name (I've been trying to think of it ever since we made
this appointment——it may have been Plunkett) who
was working with the Textile Labor
From the strike?
From the strike in the South.
What was his position again, now?
He was an organizer for the textile workers, for the T.W.O.C. originally, and then T.W.U.A. And he had been a U.T.W. organizer, I think.
And you said he was on a labor…?
No, he was working with the Textile Labor Board to gather information to…
What was the Textile Labor Board?
That was set up when the strike was settled, you see; under the N.R.A. it was set up to make sure there were no discrimination and so on.
He was a labor representative?
Well, he was, I guess, an organizer gathering evidence. But then when the N.R.A. was declared unconstitutional that went out the window, so that we don't have the hearings that we would have had, that would have demonstrated this—and maybe kept the spirit of unionism alive.
So that was never documented anywhere, then?
No, there was never any documentation.
How many people…
How many people lost their jobs, and so on.
His estimate was twenty-five thousand?
His estimate was at least twenty-five thousand. I ran into some of them.
I ran into a lot of them up in Pontiac, Michigan later on when I went up
there; it was '57 I went to work for the University of
Michigan, Wayne State, on a labor education program. We went up to
Pontiac; I found some people who'd lost their jobs there
then. I ran into some in Oakland, California, which is mostly a
Portuguese textile community. There was a plant that the union had
organized that had 8 lost their jobs in
the '34 general strike. * I should have said, "That had workers who had lost,
etc."
No.
He had been a worker in a mill in Cannon and his father had been
pro-union and he was active in the union. And they had Cannon pretty
much all out, you know, for the three weeks—probably better
than most. Well, he went out on strike, and he and the family had saved
a little money; went out on strike, and he didn't know what
to do. He wasn't only in charge of Cannon, he was in charge
of that whole area in North Carolina by default—nobody
appointed him in charge. There had to be some leadership, and he tried
to provide it. And of course he had no job when it was over, and
whatever little savings he had (a couple of thousand dollars) was gone.
Yes, and they did.
And they did.
Well, did you find any truth to the kind of stuff that was written then about paternalism in the mill villages? A lot of sociologists wrote in the thirties: Harriet Herring and George Mitchell described the mill villages in great detail.
Yes. Well, people didn't pay much rent, but my God, in the mill villages… When I was with the hosiery workers I went up to Coolomee to show some movies; we always showed "The River" and "The Plough that Broke the Plains"—they were great movies.
In Culowee?
Coolomee, North Carolina; Erwin Mills up there. A guy who was with the
union who was out of Chapel Hill, he's now a professor of
political
Yes.
My perspective was from the North and the East, you see. I knew George Mitchell very well; he was at Columbia when I was a student.
Yes?
Yes, and I knew him later, yes; and Broadus Mitchell I knew too.
You knew him too?
Yes. And, of course, with Southern Regional Council George used to do a great lecture on the South that would get the race thing in without advertising it as a lecture on race. And when we had our institutes in the South we'd always bring him in to do them.
I've heard about his color charts.
Yes, the charts, yes.
That's really something.
Great, just great—but very effective, you see. And he'd do it with such a broad southern accent that people couldn't, you know… If I said something about it then they'd say, "Well, he's just a New Yorker," and so on.
No, I wasn't criticizing their work, as much as I was just curious.
No, but I look at my perspective as different.
At Rockwood?
No, he comes out of… That's a seamless factory; Rockwood was up in the mountains, a seamless factory. He comes out of a … he and Bill Frazier (who was an organizer for the hosiery workers)—Matt was originally for the hosiery workers—come out of Bryant Hosiery, or another one there, I've forgotten which. But he was blacklisted; they were both blacklisted after the strike. They ended up on union payrolls, so it wasn't as bad for them. He could probably tell you about that.
I was just curious in kind of your impression of the state of the industry. I know that, you know, World War II really put the textile industry firmly on its feet, with the war orders.
Well, there was no question that the industry in the South was a mixed
industry: that is, there were some efficient mills and there were some
inefficient mills. The efficient mills paid a little more; but they must
have been making money, or could have with a decent management, because
there was still at that period (the early days) … enough of a
differential between northern and southern wages. And in hosiery this
was particularly true. In hosiery this was particularly true;
there's no real question about it. A low wage industry tends
to be wasteful of workers (you know, everybody knows that);
you're wasteful of workers, and you also don't
care… You have enough workers around so that you
don't enforce your rules very much: that is, a guy goes out,
you know, if you fuss with him, and so on, all that kind of thing. Now,
later on… And the industry was already an old one;
that's the other thing about the South. When I went to work
[Interruption]Mind of the South come out?
About '33, '34, later?
Yes, a little later, I guess.
A little later. We tried to get it. I guess I sold more copies of that than were sold outside of academic communities, because we used to give it to everybody. It was a hard book, but at least they'd have some understanding of the South when they went down there.
'40, right about '40.
'40, yes. Well, see, that was while I was with the hosiery workers. So I'm a big booster of that book, and I'm still recommending it to northerners who go South.
You gave that to northerners who were going South?
Yes, not to southerners. No, southerners had their own biases on all those things that Cash was writing about, you see.
Right, right. It is a tremendous book.
Is there anything better yet?
I don't think so. It's a little dated.
Oh, it's very dated, of course, but it's a tremendous book to understand the…
Well, did you know Myles Horton?
Oh yes. I met Myles, I guess, the first time in '38. I went
through Tennessee for the union—I used to make sweeps, you
know—and I stayed overnight at Highlander and spent a few
days there, and got to know Myles.
He worked for T.W.O.C.
Worked for a short time for T.W.O.C., yes.
How about Joe Pedigo, did you ever know him?
Oh yes. Well, Joe was out of the… Yes, I knew Joe very, very well.
Helped you find work?
Yes. He came out of Roanoke, the rayon mill in Roanoke.
Did you know him while you were organizing down there, or only later when you became education director?
Well, I think I got to know … he was active in labor education and stuff like that, and I may have met him when I was with the hosiery workers. See, I was always, really, doing labor education, but I would organize on the side. And it wasn't 'til very late in the game… Well no, with the hosiery workers I organized, I put in a stint of straight organizing in Martinsburg, West Virginia, which is kind of South, I guess. It's not in the hills of West Virginia, and there are no mines around or anything like that—it was very much like Virginia. And I and another chap organized that mill, and then later we ran a strike there. That was a