Claims & Credit

Last week it took the power and prestige of President Roosevelt to end a strike which had afflicted the textile industry for three weeks, had destroyed thousands of dollars worth of property and cost 15 lives. Settlement of the strike, which had flunked the National Labor Relations Board, was effected by a report from a Presidential Committee of three headed by New Hampshire's Governor Winant. No sooner had the President read this report at Hyde Park than he announced his approval of it, expressed the "very sincere hope" that strikers go back to work, without discrimination by employers.

Strike Leader Francis J. Gorman called his executive committee to Washington and the strike was promptly and unanimously voted off on the President's say-so. "An overwhelming victory!" cried Leader Gorman. "One of the greatest in all labor history!" Labor had gained, according to Mr. Gorman in the proclamation he sent to his followers, "every substantial thing" which it could hope to win by the strike.

The report of the Winant Committee, in other eyes than his, failed to bear out all of Leader Gorman's claims of victory. Because the textile strike was affecting only about half the whole industry, because public patience with strikers was beginning to run short, many a wiseacre was convinced that Labor had seized enthusiastically upon the Winant report as a graceful means of ending what otherwise would probably fizzle out in failure.

"We have secured an end to the stretch-out," claimed Leader Gorman. But the Winant report specifically stated that "it is not feasible at this time to evolve any general formulas" for regulating the stretch-out. An impartial board of three was to examine stretch-out problems in plants specified by Labor's representative and the Code Authority.

"We have secured a method of determining hours on a basis of fact," claimed Leader Gorman. Not so conclusive was the Winant Board's proposal that the Federal Trade Commission make a study of the textile industry to see if manufacturers could afford to reduce hours without reducing pay.

"We have secured practical recognition of our union," claimed Leader Gorman. But the Winant Board specifically turned down blanket recognition of United Textile Workers union, proposed instead a "plant-to-plant" representation arrangement.

"We have secured reform in the whole administration of the labor provisions of the code," claimed Leader Gorman. Here he was on solid ground. Strongest point made by the Winant Board was that the National Cotton Textile Industrial Relations Board, which works through the Code Authority, was wholly ineffective, should be supplanted by a body like the autonomous and impartial Steel Labor Relations Board. The Winant Committee thought that "investigation of labor complaints against management by management itself cannot be defended."

Like all wars, the textile strike could be said to have been "won" by neither side. The strikers had succeeded in getting their problems of wages, hours and working conditions out from under NRA, into the hands of the Federal Trade Commission and two special committees. The mill-owners promised nothing except an official discussion of grievances. Old working conditions prevail until changed by mutual agreement. In the North most mills were opened to meekly returning strikers. But in the South, as the week began, an ugly aftermath was developing. Some 80,000 returning strikers found their mills still closed, or showing "No Help Wanted" signs. Governor Talmadge of Georgia left for Chicago with his State still under martial law.

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