Gadsden Is Tough

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Gadsden Is Tough

By Maxwell S. Stewart

The Nation

Gadsden, Alabama, July 5

The strike wave which has engulfed a large portion of the industrial areas of the United States in the past few months has not touched Gadsden. Well-to-do members of the community will tell you that this is because Gadsden workers are satisfied and will not tolerate outside agitators telling them how to run their affairs. More realistic observers will suggest that Gadsden has developed a technique which makes it unhealthy for its workers to show signs of dissatisfaction with wages or working conditions. For Gadsden may lay claim to being the toughest labor city in the United States.
Other cities have had riots, occasional shootings, and sporadic vigilante activity. But the reign of terror which has been maintained in the employers' interest in this small Southern town has not been spontaneous or sporadic. It has been well organized, coolly carried out, and incomparably efficient—so effective, according to local newspapermen, that it cannot possibly be overcome. On three separate occasions during the past thirteen months, labor organizers have been mercilessly beaten on the streets in the very heart of the city, twice in broad daylight. Other beatings, less public in character, have been an almost weekly occurrence. In addition the C. I. O. was charged with complicity in the bombing of a theater in nearby Attalla some weeks ago, and even more recently three C. I. O. members who were arrested with dynamite in their car were accused of plotting to blow up the automobile owned by the head of Goodyear's company union.
On the invitation of the local labor unions, a committee of prominent ministers, writers, and teachers, primarily from the South but including a few from the North, has been in Gadsden for three days investigating the alleged reign of terror. The committee has made every effort to conduct a fair and impartial survey of the Situation. Officers of the company, city officials, and other observers have been asked to present their testimony along with that of the workers.
But the well-to-do portion of Gadsden has not exactly welcomed an investigation of its formula for maintaining labor peace. The members of the committee were shadowed whenever they went out. On the opening day of the hearings the City Commission issued a blistering statement which declared that the commission did not believe that the committee was "interested in the welfare of the community," and which ended very dramatically by asking why the group was devoting its attention to "this law-abiding community" and overlooking the opportunity of investigating conditions in many cities of the North and East. One of the members of the city commission assured the chairman of the committee that there was no trouble whatsoever in Gadsden, but added a moment later that he could not be responsible for the safety of the committee if it chose to carry out its investigation. The commission refused to grant permission for a public meeting of the committee in the municipal auditorium, and dug up an ordinance forbidding the distribution of handbills without a license to prevent the announcement of an open-air meeting. Yet the town is littered with bills announcing a speech which the mayor delivered yesterday lauding "peace, prosperity, and happiness." One of the larger hotels turned away several members of the committee because it had no riot insurance. Even the bricklayers' union, in whose hall the first day's hearings were conducted, found it advisable to withdraw its hospitality on succeeding days!
A few years ago Gadsden was little different from any other Southern town of thirty to forty thousand population. While never fully organized, it had more than a score of unions which were reasonably active. A general strike was staged in 1922 without undue violence. But there have been no strikes since 1934. About two years ago the three principal manufacturing concerns in the city—the Goodyear Rubber Company, the Gulf States Steel Company (recently acquired by the Republic Steel Corporation), and the Dwight Manufacturing Company (a textile factory)—began to take active steps to prevent the unionization guaranteed by New Deal legislation. Company unions were organized and a number of notorious thugs were imported as company guards.
The new anti-union offensive was formally launched on June 4, 1936, when Sherman H. Dalrymple, international president of the United Rubber Workers, attempted to address a meeting of Goodyear employees in the courthouse. Newly organized "squad men" from the Goodyear plant broke up the meeting and beat up Dalrymple while he was in the personal custody of the sheriff. That worthy gentleman made no effort to protect his charge beyond saying, "Never mind, boys, we will take care of him."
Angered by the attack on their president, the rubber workers' union sent Gadsden eight of its toughest and most effective organizers. Headquarters were opened near one of the main corners of the city, a stone's throw from the police station. At one o'clock in the afternoon of June 25, about four days after their arrival, these headquarters were attacked by a mob of 250 Goodyear employees. They were completely wrecked, and the eight men who happened to be inside, including four of the "tough" organizers, were cruelly beaten. Although the police had been notified of the impending attack more than a half hour before it actually occurred, they failed to arrive until the job had been completed. Thereupon they arrested the eight victims and forcibly escorted them out of the city. No criminal action was ever instituted against any of the attacking squadron, although many were identified. A civil suit brought by one of the union men encountered cold hostility in the Courts and was lost despite the fact that one of the defendants admitted being a member of the mob. When called before the La Follette committee, Mr. Michaels, superintendent of the Goodyear plant, admitted that 150 men had left the factory about noon on June 25 and had not returned until 3 o'clock. But he declared that he had instructed the foreman to stop them, and, failing this, that he had given strict orders that they should be docked for the time spent in extra-mural activities. However, pay-roll sheets showed that the men who had been identified as members of the mob drew a full day's pay.
If we are to credit the testimony of more than a score of Gadsden workers who appeared before the investigating committee, the attack on the rubber organizers was only the beginning of organized terrorism. Men were beaten up on almost any pretext, and frequently for no very obvious reason. One worker was attacked on May 31 and injured so severely that he was forced to remain in bed a week, merely because he refused to join the Gulf Shore-Republic company union. Another worker, employed at the Goodyear plant for seven and one-half years, was beaten so badly on June 7 of this year that he lost nine teeth, apparently because he refused to sign a statement declaring that working conditions are entirely satisfactory. There have been other cases even more serious, but in most such instances the testimony has been heard in private, since the victims fear that their lives would be put in jeopardy if any inkling of their testimony reached the public. Several witnesses have insisted that they were followed to the union hall when they came to appear before the committee.
In most parts of the country the Supreme Court decision upholding the Wagner Act has served to check company gangsterism. But not so in Gadsden. Practically all of the witnesses have agreed that validation of the Wagner Act was the signal for redoubled vigilance against unionism, particularly against the hated C. I. O. It happens that Gadsden is one of the few towns in the country where the local labor council makes no distinction between the C. I. O. and the A. F. of L. But the employers insist that they are opposed only to the C. I. O., and that they have no quarrel with the A, F. of L. The distinction, however, has apparently not been made clear to the "guard men," because the great majority of the workers who have been beaten up have been A. F. of L. members.
The latest outrage occurred just two weeks ago tonight, on June 21. That morning a report had gone around the city that five C. I. O. organizers had arrived to unionize the plant of the Republic Steel Company. Rumor had it that these men were staying in the Reich Hotel, the city's most impressive hostel. About five o'clock in the afternoon a crowd of tough-looking characters began to congregate around all the exits to the hotel. Local newspapermen were tipped off to hang around and see the fun. A few minutes after five, two strangers came downstairs and walked up the main street. The "squad men" followed, cursing because three of the men had presumably gotten away.
When the two strangers were finally revived in a nearby drug store, they were identified as Dowell E. Patterson, representative of the International Typographical Union from Charleston, South Carolina, and the secretary of the Gadsden local of the same union. It was merely an unfortunate case of mistaken identity; no C. I. O. organizers had actually arrived.
Of course, physical violence is not resorted to with every rank-and-file union member. All of the conventional weapons used against unions elsewhere are also employed here. Scores of union members have been discharged on one pretext or another, usually a false one. Threats have been more frequent, and probably more effective, than actual violence. There is evidence that an extensive espionage system is maintained through the various company unions. The newspapers cooperate by emphasizing the fact that all Gadsden workers are satisfied with their conditions. For many of the mountaineers who have crowded into Gadsden in recent years to work in the new factories the average wage of 30 cents an hour, or $12 a week, may indeed seem like an adequate sum. But the fact remains that $12 a week really goes little further, if any, in Gadsden than in similar small towns of the North. And the wage is markedly lower than is paid by the same companies for corresponding work in Akron or Youngstown, where unions at least have a fighting chance.
At the moment the forces opposing Gadsden labor appear overwhelmingly strong, so much so that many sympathetic observers insist that any attempt by outsiders, whether by the government or unofficial groups like the present investigating committee, can only lead to a more crushing suppression of labor activity, possibly involving the sacrifice of hundreds of lives. If Gadsden could in some manner be isolated from the rest of the United States, as the local officials would desire, this might indeed be true. But it is impossible to believe that the forces which are at work elsewhere in the country will not eventually affect the deep South. The workers are determined to prevent a second secession from the Union.