Threads of Resistance: The 1929 Rayon Strikes in Elizabethton

Visiting Elizabethton, you’re greeted by a tall figure rising into the sky: a smokestack. Faded white lettering — “BEMBERG” — runs down the red brick column and seems to mirror the faded memory of organized labor in the region. Many in East Tennessee and Southern Appalachia are at least somewhat acquainted with the hard-fought victories won by coal miners in their efforts to unionize in Harlan County and other places, but most residents of the Tri-Cities are unaware that an inspirational strike happened in their backyard.

Rayon and the Opportunistic Nature of Capitalism

During the 1920s, agriculture in East Tennessee was in decline, but textile manufacturing was on the rise. In 1926, the Bemberg rayon plant opened in Elizabethton, followed two years later by the neighboring Glanzstoff plant owned by the same German company, Vereinigte Glanzstoff Fabriken. Recent improvements in the manufacturing of viscose rayon made Elizabethton a particularly suitable location given its abundant waterways and large number of poor families seeking to supplement farming incomes with part-time wage labor. The fact that the Carter County Chancery Court voted to grant the company tax exemptions didn’t hurt either. Similar cooperations between the state and industry are abundant today as well.

Textile mills played a crucial part in this capitalist dispossession of self-determination. Many small-scale farmers were forced to move to mill towns for parts of the year to supplement their income. Men were not the only ones from rural households trying to improve their family’s living conditions: women and children also participated in part-time work.

Women in the Workforce

Most women working at the Glazstoff and Bemberg plants made between $8 and $12 a week for 56 hours’ work. Rent in that area was around $30 per month, not taking into account necessities such as groceries. Even the bus and taxi services, which ferried workers from small communities outside Elizabethton, were pricey. The men’s wages in those same plants? Around $30 per week.

Working in the “finishing” side of the plants, women breathed in the rayon particulates that would be flung in the air during reeling, which could lead to a condition known as “Brown Lung”. Machines in the finishing areas of the plants were also known to sever fingertips. In addition to the physical ramifications, the women were ordered to dress “modestly” for work, were not permitted breaks longer than 10 minutes, and were often escorted to and from the restroom, lest they linger too long from their work.
While advancements in rayon production made the fiber less flammable, the harsh conditions set by management turned these mills into tinderboxes nonetheless.

Strike!

At 12:30pm on March 12, 1929, after months of demanding better wages and working conditions, 550 women walked out of the Glanzstoff plant, organized by figures such as Margaret Brown and Christine Galliher. The next day they returned and led out the rest of the workers from that plant. Within the next few weeks, workers from the Bemberg plant walked out in solidarity. Within a month, both plants in Elizabethton were effectively shut down.

The demands were simple: better working conditions and an increase in pay to match the other textile mills in the region. When plant management refused to even sit down with the strikers, Bemberg workers reached out to the United Textile Workers of America (UTW). This was not the first contact with organized labor, as Local 1630 of the UTW had been organized years before. This event, however, breathed new life into the union. A staggering 93% of workers in both mills unionized. This, coupled with the large community support for the union, gave many hope that change was finally on the rise for the workers.
Mill management got an injunction against the workers’ right to assemble and picket near the mills. Workers retaliated by blocking the roads to the plants, stopping the transportation of paperwork that would finalize the injunction. The company lawyer, George Dugger, was allegedly struck by a rock thrown by a striker as his car drove through the picket line. When he returned with law enforcement, the strikers were dispersed violently by cars driving in excess of 50 miles per hour towards them.Additionally, factory management and community members branded women strikers as “hussies” and “loose women” as punishment for defying traditional gender roles. The Ku Klux Klan burned crosses in the yards of female strikers. These tactics demonstrate how bosses and elites have long mobilized patriarchy to undermine labor movements — a strategy we see today in the attacks on queer people.

A Tentative Agreement, Corporate Backstabbing, and Violent Clashes

Arthur Mothwurf, manager of the mills, reached an initial settlement with the unions on March 22nd. The agreement promised to raise wages, establish worker committees in order to deal with further grievances, and allow strikers to return to their jobs. This decision angered the Chamber of Commerce, who viewed the unionized strikers as a threat to the promised industrialization of Elizabethton, which would almost assuredly have lined their own pockets. They kidnapped two of the prominent union organizers, drove them to the North Carolina line, and told them to not come back, lest something drastic happen to them. The organizers, Alfred Hoffman and Edward McGrady, refused to be intimidated, and were returned to Elizabethton within a week, this time under armed union guard.

Not only were the promised wage increases not paid, almost 100 of the striking workers were fired within a few weeks. Worker’s committees lodged complaints. In turn, they were also met with firings. When, on April 15th, 90 more workers were fired, the strike recommenced, with thousands of plant workers rejoining the picket line.

This time, management had the governor call in the National Guard. Machine guns became a common sight on the roofs of the plants. Detachments marched into the surrounding hollers to escort scabs — replacement workers brought in to break the strike — to the mills. Both pro- and anti-union people began to carry firearms openly. Union member and mechanical foreman, Mack Elliot, had his house in Stoney Creek blown up with dynamite. The strikers destroyed a water line to the plants in order to halt production.

In the aftermath, over 1,200 strikers were arrested, a second (nearly identical) agreement was reached, and workers returned to better pay and a new manager who set about trying to divert workers away from the question of power and rights by conceding a company union and recreation leagues.

Weaving the Threads of the Past into a Mighty May Day Tapestry

While the agreement seemed to placate the demands of the strikers, new management carried on the traditions of its predecessors: shirk on raises, punish union members, and obfuscate any complaints brought to them.

In this seemingly dim light, we must remember the legacy left behind by the Elizabethton strikes. Similar, and even more violent, strikes were occurring across the US, especially in the southern textile mills in cities like Gastonia, NC and Greenville, SC. This wave of people power eventually resulted in the biggest organized strike in the US at that point in history: the 1934 US Textile Workers Strike. 400,000+ participants chose the labor movement instead of the looms.

This May Day, when the oppressive forces of capitalism threaten to rip our lives to shreds, remember that the most effective way to hold the tapestry of humanity together is by the strong stitching of solidarity.