One hundred years on, and it is still ‘labor’s next task.’

‘The Call of the South: Labor’s Next Task’ by A.J. Muste from Labor Age. Vol. 17 No. 8. August, 1928.

The report of progress that comes from the Piedmont Organizing Council in North Carolina; the opening of the Southern Summer School for Women Workers in Industry; the extension of the work of the Women’s Trade Union League in that section; the fact that the American Federation of Teachers recently for the third time elected Miss Mary Barker of Atlanta, Georgia, as its national president; the holding of the convention of the International Association of Machinists in the latter city in September, and the staging of an educational institute in that connection by the Educational Department of the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the I. A. of M. may all be taken as indications that the attention of labor is being increasingly turned to the South. All these things are significant and hold so much promise if followed through, that we may well give brief consideration here to the South as a field requiring attention, and likely to reward organizing effort bestowed upon it.

Those who have been working in the South recently all contend that the Southern situation must be tackled soon and on an adequate scale. There is good ground for this contention. If the Southern field is permitted to be uncared for much longer, a critical situation will develop for American labor. The textile industry in that section, for example, is becoming ever larger and more powerful. It is as yet unorganized. It is, however, no longer the only industry in that section of the country. Coal, steel, furniture, public utilities, railroads and other: great industries are springing up. These industries are also, in the South at least, unorganized. If this condition continues much longer, we shall have a non-union trustified, industrial South. If this enemy is not conquered and put under control while he is young and has not yet reached his full strength, it is useless to expect that anything can be done with him later.

The coal industry has recently furnished us with a striking example of what will happen in textiles and elsewhere if this development is permitted to take place. That industry moved out of the northern central competitive field into the South, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and so on. For whatever reason, it was permitted to develop there under non-union conditions. As soon as the industry had grown to power in the South, this unorganized section turned round and stabbed the union in the back in the North. If even so powerful an organization as the United Mine Workers of America was unable to cope with this Southern situation, once it had gotten well under way, what is going to happen if we permit a tremendous, trustified, non-union textile industry to grow up in the South, financed and supported by equally powerful and unorganized coal, steel, furniture, and public utilities industries? It seems clear that postponing the drive on the South much longer may be suicidal indeed. With that growing section unorganized it will become more and more impossible to hold what little we have in more than one industry.   

Favorable Opportunities

For the moment it may well be that the South furnishes more favorable opportunities for organizational work in certain industries than the North. In the North, the textile industry, for example, is passing through a difficult period of reorganization. It is hard to organize workers in such a situation. In the South, the industry is new and constantly growing. For the most part it is utilizing new machinery and new methods. The workers in such a growing industry are in a more favorable position to work for organization than are those in an industry that is standing still or going backward.

The fact to which we have already alluded, that other industries are also developing in the South, has an important bearing upon prospects for organization in the textile field. So long as textiles were the only industry of any size, textile employers had the labor market to themselves. If workers in the textile mills did not behave and were discharged, the only recourse they had was to go back to the farms and hills. More and more, however, other industries will now be competing for labor in the South. The worker discharged from a textile mill or disgusted with conditions there, may walk off and have a fair chance to pick up a job in some other industry, and vice versa. If he does not take advantage of the opportunity, his children will. Thus the employer will have to be more considerate and the worker will be more favorably situated for organizing purposes.

Effect of Industrial Growth

In still another way the developing industrialism of the South will tend to create a condition favorable for organization. The change from a purely agricultural to an industrial regime will create an upheaval in the South as it has done in every other place where this change has taken place. People will be crowded together. They will learn to read and write. They will come into contact with new ideas. Their ways of living and thinking will be radically altered. This ferment is bound to break up the old tight situation down there, to make people readier to adopt new ideas including the idea of trade union organization. It may well be that the present unusual presidential campaign may contribute something to this development.

Another important element in the situation is that the workers who have come out of the hills and from the farms and into industry, and to whom at first even the mill village may have seemed like paradise in comparison to what they had come from, will not always think so well of mill village conditions. Even if the parents remain tolerably satisfied, the children who have been accustomed all their lives to these conditions will regard them as a matter of course, and will compare them not with the conditions their parents had back on the farm, but with the conditions of workers elsewhere. Thus there will be a normal basis for a certain amount of dissatisfaction among the workers on which the union can build.

In conclusion, the workers in the Southern field point out that any campaign undertaken there must be on a large scale. The battles may be isolated and on a small scale, but the war must be waged against the enemy all along the line. This is for two chief reasons. In the first place, industry itself is organized on a big scale. The corporation form of organization predominates more and more. It is useless to strike one mill of a corporation which has plenty of other establishments in which to get its work done. Even where different firms are involved, they are combined in trade associations and especially likely to support each other in case of labor difficulties. Furthermore, to a great extent, large firms and small are alike dependent upon the banks, which will enforce an open shop policy in Southern industry as long as they can; in other words, until labor can wage an adequate campaign for organization all along the line. A second reason why any campaign to be effective must be a general one is that sentiment among the workers and the general public is anti-union, or where the workers have some favorable disposition toward unionism, they have been terrorized. It is impossible to get workers in a single firm or locality to move in the face of this prevailing sentiment. There must be a new attitude toward unionism, a new rebelliousness and courage developed in the Southern working class as a whole, or movements in particular situations will prove expensive and in the end abortive.

Breaking Ground

This would seem to mean that a great deal of preliminary educational work is required, work which must be done at comparatively little expense, because even if the American Federation of Labor and the international unions most directly interested, and feeling some concern, pool their resources, there will not be an immense treasury available, since the labor movement as a whole is not living in clover at the present time.

How may such preparatory work be accomplished at relatively little cost? There are agencies such as the National Women’s Trade Union League, which will help. There are likewise a good many outside friendly agencies such as the Industrial Department of the Y.W.C.A., the League of Women Voters, certain groups of newspaper editors, college teachers, clergymen, etc., who are willing to lend their aid in such work.

Then there are free lance individuals; workers, for example, who have been thrown out of work in their own industries by the present disturbed conditions, who have the missionary spirit, like the men and women who in the past founded our international unions, and who would be glad to go to the South, find work in the mills and mines, and lay the foundation for organizing campaigns, even at considerable risk to themselves, and with little expense to the labor movement. Besides such young workers, there are many young college students who are idealistically interested in the labor movement, who would be glad to throw themselves into efforts of this sort. Such work might at first be carried on perhaps unofficially, but should certainly be supervised and directed by certain labor organizations acting as coordinating agents.

Of course, cooperation is necessary from the general labor movement in the South—the local unions, city central bodies, state federations, and the American Federation of Labor.

It is encouraging to note that efforts along all these lines are already in fact under way. Much more must be done, however, and without delay. All who are working in the South are agreed upon that.

Many voices in the South are crying that the need is critical, and that the opportunity is at hand; crying in the old Bible phrase that “the harvest is plenteous, but the laborers are few.” What shall be American Labor’s answer to these cries?

Labor Age was a left-labor monthly magazine with origins in Socialist Review, journal of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. Published by the Labor Publication Society from 1921-1933 aligned with the League for Industrial Democracy of left-wing trade unionists across industries. During 1929-33 the magazine was affiliated with the Conference for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA) led by A. J. Muste. James Maurer, Harry W. Laidler, and Louis Budenz were also writers. The orientation of the magazine was industrial unionism, planning, nationalization, and was illustrated with photos and cartoons. With its stress on worker education, social unionism and rank and file activism, it is one of the essential journals of the radical US labor socialist movement of its time.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/laborage/v17n08-aug-1928-LA.pdf