The Textile Workers Strike-FeThread for the 3rd of September 2021

The Textile Workers' Strike of 1934 began on this day that year and was the largest strike in U.S. history at the time, involving 400,000 textile workers from New England, the Mid-Atlantic states, and the U.S. Southern states, lasting twenty-two days.

Due to President Roosevelt's labor reforms, union membership grew greatly leading up to the strike - the United Textile Workers (UTW), which had no more than 15,000 members in February 1933, grew to 250,000 members by June 1934, of whom roughly half were cotton mill workers.

On September 3rd, thousands of workers took the streets in Gastonia, North Carolina to form a parade celebrating Labor Day, and the next day approximately 20,000 out of the 25,000 textile workers in the county were out on strike. Hundreds of thousands of textile workers across the country soon followed suit.

Strikers faced violence from both state police, private citizens, and private guards for the mills - Governor Blackwood of South Carolina announced that he would deputize the state's "mayors, sheriffs, peace officers and every good citizen" to maintain order, and accordingly, dozens of protesting workers were killed as martial law was declared and private guards fired into crowds across the country.

Results of the strike were mixed, but workers in the South fared particularly badly. Thousands of striking mill workers did not return to the mills, many others were blacklisted, and some union officials claimed victory, despite worker demands not being met.

Southern mill workers were in particular were extremely bitter at the union and its officials for calling off the strike and putting their faith in government boards, when the employers had conceded nothing.

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