LABOR: Struggle in Dixie

LABOR Struggle in DixieHymning the gospel of unionism with tent-revival fervor, 900 millworkers in Henderson, N.C. (pop. 14,500) last week observed the first anniversary of their strike against the Harriet-Henderson Cotton Mills with hand-clapping choruses of Onward, Christian Soldiers and Solidarity Forever. Carrying U.S. and Confederate flags, joined by hundreds of gift-bearing sympathizers, members of Locals 578 and 584, Textile Workers Union of America, jammed Henderson’s National Guard armory, raised the rafters with well-tuned pentecostal voices and stood reverently as Mrs. Nannie Hughes, a millworker for 45 years, besought the Almighty. “Dearest Lord,” implored Grandmother Hughes in an eight-minute prayer, “look especially into the heart of one so hard and bitter.”

Everybody knew that the Lord was supposed to soften the heart of John Downey Cooper Jr., 69, owner and son of a founder of the Harriet-Henderson mills. Long regarded with paternal affection by his employees, old “John D.” unexpectedly scuttled the key compulsory-arbitration clause of a 14-year-old contract a year ago. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. Textile Workers (who made no counter demands) were convinced that they were up against old-fashioned union-busting in a state where their toe hold was all too shaky. Reluctantly, they pulled 1,000 workers from the mill in a strike that has since ripped apart what was once a quiet, tight-woven community in what begins to look like a lost cause.

Long Division. In mid-February, John D. reopened the mills with nonunion workers, mostly farmers recruited from as far away as Virginia. Despite the presence of more than 100 state highway patrolmen, violence flared at the mill gates. Coming in the role of peacemaker in March, Governor Luther H. Hodges, himself a onetime textile executive, helped to achieve a settlement, publicly accused Cooper of “misleading” him when the settlement blew up. In May, behind the bayonets of 300 National Guardsmen, the mills resumed three-shift production, with fewer than 100 union members at work.

Almost nightly explosions and the crack of rifles along the highway were the union’s response. Surprisingly, only one person was seriously injured.

Quiet but tense since the militia withdrew in August, Henderson is divided between the dogged strikers and the rest of the city—which just wishes the strike would go away. High School Principal Frederick R. Kesler believes “a lot of things have been said in this town that will take a long time to heal,” worries that the strike may erect a permanent wall of hatred between children from the town and the mill villages. Scripture-quoting West Virginia-born Boyd Payton, 51, Textile Workers’ director for the Carolinas, keeps his remarkably loyal Bible-belt flock together with reminders of the old Confederate heritage, likens the strikers to “those who followed Pettigrew, Fender and Pickett to the heights of Gettysburg.”

Short Future. But like Gettysburg, the strike may end in strategic retreat. John D.’s mills are prospering, his spindles whirring with 500,000 Ibs. of carded yarn weekly, and he plans a half-million-dollar expansion program. (“It was a damned expensive thing, all this trouble, but it was worth it.”) Next month, when state unemployment insurance (as high as $32 a week) runs out, the Textile Workers must spend $12,000 a week to feed and shelter 750 strikers who have not found temporary jobs. Strike expenses have already soared over the $600,000 mark. The union must soon decide whether to court bankruptcy by staying or suffer a devastating psychological blow by withdrawing.

Last week the sympathetic Raleigh News and Observer sounded the death knell: “For all practicable purpose, the union is busted irrevocably.” Said Nannie Hughes to a reporter: “I’m still hoping that somewhere, somehow, God will find a way.”