From tents to food to summer schools, the Comintern’s Workers International Relief aimed to help in the care of workers in struggle around the world. Caroline Drew reports on the need the W.I.R. filled in the southern textile struggles like Gastonia.

‘The Workers Relief Organization in the South’ by Caroline Drew from The Daily Worker. Vol. 6 No. 336. April 4, 1930.

ONE year ago the Workers International Relief entered the South. This was a new field. The W.I.R. had no committees, no branches, and was unknown to the Negro and white workers.

Two thousands workers in the Loray Mill, Gastonia, voted to strike April 1, under the militant National Textile Workers Union. Their vote was a fight against the eleven hour work day, the unbearable stretch-out and miserably low wages in the form of coupons in the company store which were spent by the workers in advance before the end of the week. The strikers were penniless the day they came out. The W.I.R. was called upon to care for the strikers and their families, and immediately established a relief station.

Can’t Be Stopped.

One night the relief station was raided and the food thrown upon the streets. The W.I.R. answered by distributing food from a truck on the streets.

The bosses next move was evicting the workers from the company houses. The W.I.R. responded by establishing a tent colony. It was this tent colony which was raided on June 7 and which resulted in one strike leader being wounded, three policemen wounded, the chief of police mortally.

The W.I.R. was the first organization establish itself after the terror. It built a new tent colony and rallied the workers. All the forces of the state, the militia, the hired thugs, the stool pigeons, which were used against the strikers and against the strikers’ organizations could not stop the militancy of the workers.

The strike opened a new life for the Southern textile workers. This new proletariat fresh from mountain farms was not used to industrial life. They had very little organization experiences. The speed up and lowering of wages by the mill owners a year ago resulted in a wave of strikes throughout the South and the struggle against their bosses quickly developed in them the need of combined action. Through the efforts of the W.I.R. calling social gatherings as propaganda centers and mass meetings the workers got to know each other.

Life in each mill village is the same, paternalistic, carefully guarded over by the mill owners and their hirelings to see that their slaves are “contented.” The mill owners stop at nothing to enforce their rule. This was proven by the onslaught Sept. 14 in Gastonia when workers attempted to attend a mass meeting called by the National Textile Workers Union and were shot at and Ella May was killed.

There were strikes in Pineville, Bessemer City, Charlotte, Pinoka, which the Workers International Relief took care of. Thousands of men, women and children learned the meaning of Solidarity. There have always been Community Chests in these mill villages, to which the workers are forced to contribute. They usually are not asked-just docked. When the strike came on, the workers learned in a hurry the money they contributed was used against them to break the strike.

Throughout the strike the relief committee was trained to take a leading position and rally the workers for the fighting policy of the W. I.R. The mass meetings held by the W.I.R. stressed the fact that strikes can only be won through larger picket lines, on which not only the men but the women and children should take their places. The strikers were told that workers in W.I.R. branches give relief to strikers only on the basis that they are militant and help to win the strike.

Relief committees in the South collected some funds among those who were working. But the Southern workers live so near starvation they have very little to give.

All winter, the W.I.R. has been working together with the T.U.U.L. and N.T.W.U., organizing the workers in preparation for the gigantic strikes in the South which will establish a 7-hour day an a decent living wage.

Towards this end the W.I.R. branches have been rallying the workers in the South on an educational, organization, and social program. “A Trip to the Soviet Union” has been shown in many Southern cities, and the workers have had a chance to see some of the advantages achieved by the Russian workers.

This summer the W.I.R. experts to establish a Southern camp for workers’ children and train them as good working class soldiers. It shall also establish Children’s Kitchens and Playgrounds.

The W.I.R., together with other militant organizations in the South has made progress during its year of activity. Negro and white workers are being rallied to a program of organization and struggle. The W.I.R. has come to the South to stay. It grows out of needs of the workers and poor farmers.

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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