A class in motion. Dramatic scenes reported by Carl Reeve from Rhode Island ninety years ago as the Uprising of ’34 of one million textile workers swept the country.

‘Women Aid as Rhode Island Strikers in Fight Against the Guardsmen’ by Carl Reeve from The Daily Worker. Vol. 11 No. 218. September 11, 1934.

PROVIDENCE, R.I., Sept. 10. More than 5,000 workers are massed as this is written, and more are massing around the Sales Finishing Company mill at Salesville, R.I. The State troopers have set up machine guns and wired off the roads leading to the mill.

I stood at 3 o’clock on the Lansdowne Avenue mill entrance. The crowd of strikers had been growing steadily for an hour and the first strikebreakers began to come out. One of them as he passed the mass pickets swung at a striker. The crowd surged around. Without a moment’s delay, the State troopers set off tear gas grenades.

Troopers Gas Strikers

For more than an hour the strikers, among whom were hundreds of women, faced a constant barrage of troopers’ tear gas grenades, guns and smoke pistols. Lansdowne Avenue resembled a battleground of the World War. The strikers, particularly the younger ones, were in the front lines, defending their ranks with cobblestones and bricks and anything which came handy. Again and again the workers retreated a few feet, only to reform their ranks and charge back toward the street leading to the mill entrance. Stones filled the air.

Strikers Repulse Troopers

The hats of the State troopers were dented in. Some of them were limping. The young strikers would pause a moment to wipe their eyes and then return to the front line. After the fight the strikers were still within a half a block of their starting point, and the score of State troopers were standing sullenly up the bank on mill property. their fingers on the triggers of rifles and riot guns.

They stood behind their machine guns, which faced the workers on Lansdowne Avenue. The tear gas bombs were exploded so rapidly that the streets were choked. Many, including your correspondent, were streaming tears. But much of the tear gas was taken by the wind back to the faces of the Rhode Island State troopers.

Trooper Clubs Worker

I saw one worker badly injured by a trooper’s club, taken off to the rear in an automobile. The strikers opened the way for their wounded fellow workers like a well-disciplined army. Several women were injured, and scores, perhaps hundreds, felt the effects of the tear gas guns and bombs. But not once during the fighting were the workers routed. Their retreat was orderly and time after time they reformed and charged with rocks flying.

The State troopers wore tin hats, carried bags of grenades over their shoulders, long clubs and a number carried tear gas guns and rifles ready for use.

More than 1,000 workers are still picketing around the mill and declare they will fight until it is closed. This mill is a key mill and one of several in Rhode Island on which the strikers were concentrating today.

Main Textile Mills Stopped

A tour of Rhode Island textile centers which began early this morning showed that the strikers have achieved their objective in keeping important textile centers in New England closed.

Ninety per cent of the New England textile workers numbering 200,000 are solid on strike.

Strikers Prove Militancy

As in the Saylesville battle the strikers are showing the greatest militancy and are determined to keep all mills closed and shut down those remaining few which are trying to run.

This morning I visited the North Dighton mill where the Hope Finishing Company has imported more than five thousand gunmen to guard their plant. Here, too, we saw scenes reminiscent of a battlefield. There are at every side of the mill numbers of fire hose connected and ready for instant use against the strikers. Thugs with armed bands terming them “Military Police” are marching here and there. New truck loads of these hired thugs which are deputized are arriving almost hourly. These gangsters have long and short clubs, tear gas machine guns, rifles and all war paraphernalia.

State Arms Mill Gang

The troopers say they are ready to attack pickets when they show up. North Dighton is practically owned by Milliken, who owns the mill. He may be compared to Kohler. He owns the houses his workers live in and threatens them with eviction if “disloyal.” The workers are virtually prisoners inside this mill. No one can get within a quarter of a mile of it. All roads are blocked by the army of guards and police. Some young sons of mill workers were forced to be deputized on fear of their fathers being fired and evicted.

It was revealed today that the State Government has aided in the arming of this gang for the mill owners. This revelation came out when it was learned that forty-seven policemen from little surrounding Massachusetts towns were sent to the Dighton mill at the request of General Needham in charge of the Massachusetts National Guard.

More Mills Closed Down

Mayor MacDonald spilled this when he said he had sent police to Dighton at the request of a representative of Needham. Thus, although the guard had not yet been called by Governor Ely, the State Government is helping to pour armed forces into key mill centers. The Slatersville Finishing Company at North Smithfield was closed down by pickets this morning. Mills in Woonsocket and East Greenwich were closed down by mass picketing today. The Wood River Woolen Company of Hope Valley was also closed down. Mills throughout Providence are being picketed today. Woonsocket, Samoset Company attempted to open, but several hundred pickets closed the plant.

Strike Spread Continues

Thirty-one more mills in Woonsocket alone closed today. The strike thus continues to spread. The strikers made decided gains throughout the day. The last mill working in Fall River, Luther Manufacturing Co., closed today following mass picketing of the mill.

This spreading of the strike and continued effectiveness was achieved in spite of a movement of armed forces into New England, which I observed Friday in Lawrence and Lowell and today throughout Rhode Island. Literally hundreds of gangsters are riding into New England in trucks. The mill owners are determined to break the strike through these terroristic measures, but the mass picket lines today on the first day of the second week of the strike checkmated them. Greenwich Bleachey was closed down by pickets at East Greenwich by mass picket lines. Warren Textile and Machinery Supply Co., at Warren, R.I., was closed. There were four known arrests of strikers by state troopers at the battle in front of the Sayles Finishing Co. plant at Saylesville. They were dragged into the mill yard.

Strikers Batter Troops

After the fight the state troopers showed the wear of the battle. A number had heavy dents in their tin hats and several were limping. One woman and a young girl striker had to be assisted from the fight by strikers after being beaten by the trooper clubs.

Strikers Jeer at Cops

City police arrived on the scene toward the close of the fight, but they were not taken seriously by the strikers. They came from Central Falls. The mill is located on the borders of Pawtucket, only a few miles from Providence. Throughout the fight, the strikers were shouting derisively at the state troopers and the police. “Here come the Americans,” the strikers taunted when about five Central Falls police, old men, ambled into the fray. The strikers marched up the street toward the mill behind the police cheering. A baby was overcome by tear gas in one of the houses on Lansdowne Avenue.

Legionaires Guard Mill

Reports coming in now from all centers show that today the strikers were able to spread the strike even in small mills. As I passed through Walpole I saw a little mill, the Kendall Surgical Bandage Company, being guarded by Legionaires with tin hats and clubs. They were afraid of pickets coming.

The Cranston Print Works which we visited today, was also heavily guarded and the workers were hanging out the windows on the lookout for pickets. They were ready to come out as soon as the picket lines arrived. All mills shut down last week remain closed.

The mill owners strategy is to end mass picketing as soon as they can. They have ordered only six pickets in front of the mill gates. And these must have arm bands. The U.T.W. leaders carry out these orders without even protest but mass picketing comes from the militant workers themselves who crowd around the mill gates, as near as police let them come, by the thousands, it is these crowds of strikers who have spread the strike.

Following on last week’s message of Governor Ely, of Massachusetts, to the union threatening force against mass picketing today Governor T.F. Green of Rhode Island issued a similar attack on the strike.

Green emphasized that picketing must be limited and “peaceful” and spoke against “intimidation, coercion or duress.”

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

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