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| Textile Workers' Organizing Committee | |
|---|---|
| Name | Textile Workers' Organizing Committee |
| Founded | 1935 |
| Dissolved | 1939 |
| Headquarters | New York City |
| Affiliation | Committee for Industrial Organization |
| Key people | John L. Lewis; Emil Rieve; J. H. Taylor; James B. Carey |
Textile Workers' Organizing Committee was a mid-1930s labor organizing body created to unionize workers in the American textile industry during the Great Depression, coordinating campaigns across mills in the Southern United States and New England. It pursued industrial unionism in alliance with national labor organizations, confronting textile manufacturers, state authorities, and local law enforcement while influencing later labor legislation and union structure. The committee's activities intersected with prominent labor leaders, regional political figures, and national debates about craft versus industrial unionism.
The committee emerged amid disputes between the American Federation of Labor and proponents of the Committee for Industrial Organization, led by John L. Lewis, who sought to organize mass-production industries including steel, auto, and textiles. Influenced by earlier organizing drives such as the Passaic Textile Strike and the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike, the committee responded to the textile sector's concentration in centers like Lowell, Massachusetts, Greenville, South Carolina, and Gastonia, North Carolina. Economic dislocation during the Great Depression and the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act created openings exploited by organizers associated with the Socialist Party of America and the Communist Party USA, even as conservative leaders in the United Textile Workers of America resisted industrial approaches. The founding drew on resources from the Congress of Industrial Organizations campaign apparatus, with strategic direction influenced by leaders connected to the United Mine Workers of America and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.
Leadership included figures aligned with the Committee for Industrial Organization leadership such as organizers connected to Emil Rieve and activists who had worked with the National Labor Relations Board's advocates for collective bargaining. The committee's organizers recruited among millhands, many of whom were members of immigrant communities from regions represented by the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and veterans of strikes associated with the Industrial Workers of the World. Membership drew heavily from communities near industrial towns like Hendersonville, North Carolina and Fall River, Massachusetts, incorporating women workers, African American operatives, and migrant laborers whose grievances echoed those addressed in litigation under the Wagner Act. Internal tensions reflected affiliations with the Communist Party USA as well as non-Communist trade unionists linked to the American Communist Party's labor caucuses and the leadership networks around A. Philip Randolph and Walter Reuther.
The committee coordinated high-profile campaigns and strikes in cotton and wool mills, staging mass actions reminiscent of the 1929 Loray Mill Strike in Gastonia and the 1934 general strike wave that included the Toledo Auto-Lite Strike. Notable campaigns targeted textile centers in Charlotte, North Carolina, Dover, New Hampshire, and New Bedford, Massachusetts. Organizers deployed tactics similar to those used by the CIO in automobile and steel drives, including mass picketing, sit-downs modeled after those in the Great Depression era, and public rallies invoking labor statutes like the National Labor Relations Act. The committee faced violent confrontations with private security forces associated with mill owners linked to firms such as J.P. Stevens & Co. and the American Woolen Company, and entanglements with police influenced by state governors like O. Max Gardner and Clyde R. Hoey. Strike outcomes varied: some local victories produced recognition agreements; others, such as the Gastonia confrontation, ended in arrests and suppressed activity.
Functioning as an affiliate of the Committee for Industrial Organization, the committee coordinated closely with the Congress of Industrial Organizations leadership even as the American Federation of Labor contested jurisdiction. It negotiated jurisdictional demarcations with the United Textile Workers of America, while leveraging support from the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and solidarity from industrial unions like the United Mine Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The committee's alignment with the CIO placed it in the center of the dispute that culminated in the 1938 split between the AFL and CIO, influencing the eventual affiliation of textile locals with larger industrial unions such as the Textile Workers Union of America formed later. Tensions over Communist influence mirrored conflicts seen within the Mine Workers and Auto Workers organizing drives.
Employers responded through strategies including corporate anti-union campaigns, deployment of private security, coordination with local sheriffs, and lobbying through trade associations like the Southern Textile Association. State and federal responses involved injunctions issued by courts influenced by judges appointed by presidents such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, while federal agencies like the National Labor Relations Board and actions under the Wagner Act shaped legal space for bargaining. Congressional scrutiny, led by committees with members tied to regions dependent on textile mills, produced investigations similar in character to later hearings held by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Police interventions in strikes sometimes produced national attention through coverage in publications like The New Republic and The Nation.
Although the committee dissolved before achieving sustained national recognition, its campaigns influenced the industrial union model that the CIO expanded into southern industries and contributed to the eventual formation of the Textile Workers Union of America and later merges into unions such as the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. Its organizing exposed patterns of employer resistance that informed labor law enforcement under subsequent administrations and contributed to scholarly studies by historians associated with institutions like Harvard University and Columbia University. The committee's legacy is visible in regional labor culture preserved in archives at repositories such as the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, and in the narratives of labor leaders who later shaped national policy in entities like the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board.