Why Did The Textile Workers Un

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southern economy. In 1900 there were one hundred seventy-seven mills in North Carolina, but by the early nineteen twenties, that number had grown to over five hundred, with fifty in Gaston County alone. Textiles was a booming industry in the south. South Carolina employed only 2,053 people in the industry at the turn of the century, but by 1920 nearly 50,000 people worked in mills, one sixth of South Carolina’s population. Virginia’s textile industry grew just as quickly with the incorporation of the Riverside Cotton Mills which had only 2,240 spindles and a mere one hundred looms. By the turn of the century the mill expanded and operated 67,650 spindles and 200,000 looms. Growth seemed to continue almost exponentially until the depression set in in 1929.
It could easily be said that the depression was the cause of the ill will that the workers felt toward their employers. Although the mills seemed to be doing great, grossing sales in the billions of dollars, the working ...

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but this strike, called the Loray Mill Strike, began the massive spread of unionization sentiment in the south. The year of 1929 marked the boom of the spread of unionization in the south, agitated by the success of the Loray Mill strike.
South Carolina’s, as well as Virginia’s industry executives were fearing the spread of this push for unization would spread across North Carolina’s borders and into their states. Their fears were not unwarranted. The last major labor battle in textile south was in Ronoak Rapids, North Carolina between pro-union laborers and the J. P. Stevens Company where workers joined the TWUA (Textile Workers Union of America) and soon merged with the ...

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