First let us start with a little history about the current events at this time. The First World War had just ended. The Great Depression had just begun. They called 1920- 1929 the Stretch out. Production in cotton mills soared during World War I to accommodate the demand for …show more content…
The union's decision had lasting repercussions for Southern workers. The strike failed, and its failure was a dark cloud over the Southern labor movement for the rest of the century. The union might have escaped this disaster if it had characterized the strike as a first step, rather than attempting to pass it off as a victory. The memory of blacklisting and defeat soured many Southern textile workers on unions for decades. Anti-union sentiment in the South kept wages low for decades, but also acted as a catalyst for development later when industries moved there from the North and Midwest because of lower costs. Employers resisted integrating textile mills; when they were forced to do so by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, many jobs in the textile industry were already moving overseas, a trend that accelerated in the 1980s.
References
Brecher, J. (1997). Strike! (Rev. and updated Ed.). Boston, MA: South End Press.
Hall, J. (1987). Like a family: The making of a Southern cotton mill world. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Kendrick, A. (n.d.). "Alabama Goes On Strike" In the Nation.
Lahne, H. (1945). The Cotton Mill Worker. The Journal of Economic History, 5(1), 332-332.
Salmond, J. (2002). The general textile strike of 1934 from Maine to Alabama. Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri