Loray Mill's owners brought on violent strike

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strike

Communists blamed by many for Gastonia's deadly 1929 dispute

DAVID LEE MCMULLEN

Special to the Observer


Seventy-five years ago tomorrow, the workers of Gastonia's Loray Mill walked out in what has become the most infamous textile strike in the history of the South.

Many still blame the strike and the associated violence on a massive Communist conspiracy, but this is simply not true. It is a myth created by those who opposed the strike. The strike and most of the violence were the result of actions by the mill owners and their agents, not the strikers or the Communist labor activists.

In the two years prior to the strike, the management of Loray implemented a series of efficiency measures -- the workers called them "stretch-out" and "doubling" -- that cut the mill's workforce from 3,500 to 2,200. In addition, two pay cuts reduced wages for the remaining workers by 25 to 50 percent. Production levels remained constant, and the company saved $500,000.

At the time of the strike, the mill employed men, women and children, paying some less than 10 cents an hour. One Loray Mill family of five, with two working adults, existed on a total weekly income of $13.50, from which they had to pay rent back to the mill owners for a mill house that had no electricity. By comparison, the average salaried worker in Gaston County at the time made more than $50 a week

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