Passing of the Mill Village by Harriet L. Herring

Author:Harriet L. Herring [Herring, Harriet L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, State & Local, South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV)
ISBN: 9781469650173
Google: p7xiDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Published: 2018-07-11T00:42:54+00:00

EARLY UNION POLICY

The first dozen sales, from 1934 to 1938, were of villages where there was no union and little organization activity. Between 1938 and 1940 the nearly 40 villages sold included 2 where the union had a contract and 8 where, although the union lacked a contract, it was active and influential. Thus up to 1940 the direct experience of union leaders with sales was limited. Their attitude on the subject was based both on general principles and on the current economic situation.

In the main the attitude of union leaders interviewed in 1940—regional, state, district, and local—was unfavorable. Some, like the people in the villages, were understandably suspicious that there was a trick in such a complete reversal of mill policy. The companies had much to say in their official announcements of sales about giving their workers an opportunity for home ownership with all the attendant virtues of good citizenship: why the sudden conversion to a good American principle they had so long ignored? One leader forthrightly declared and others implied that the mills were unloading a bad investment on the workers, thus voicing the other side of the mill argument that it wished to be rid of the subsidy for village operation. One district leader said that inasmuch as many of the houses were of cheap construction, built in cheap times and with a long period of depreciation behind them, the rents were quite enough for upkeep, and now the mills wanted to sell out at a profit. Almost all union representatives interviewed in 1940 considered the prices too high, though a local leader sometimes excepted a specific sale in his area.

Part of the disapproval centered around their evaluation of the houses the workers were having to buy: they pointed out that many were of light, often flimsy construction with poor sanitation, making them substandard according to modern ideas. This was a period of federal aid to housing and the union leaders felt that the southern textile worker needed, and was as much entitled to, such benefits as anybody in the country. They suggested the creation of local housing authorities which, with government aid, could supply good houses for low rental or for sale on long terms. In this way a double purpose would be served—better housing for the workers and freedom from the undesirable tie-up of job and house.

It should perhaps be pointed out that this suggested solution was somewhat unrealistic. The surrounding public had long accepted mill housing as the mill’s business and what it provided as adequate. Certainly its housing compared favorably with much in any specific area. Neither tax payers nor the local public would have supported a movement for federal housing, especially when so influential a group as the mill owners had houses they wished to sell.

Though these labor leaders believed in home ownership in principle, they shared the doubts of social economists after the depression, whether it was wise for low income, mass production workers; they felt it specially unwise for workers attached to an industry subject to such ups and downs as textiles.

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