1914–1915 Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills strike
Historians have also discussed reasons for the strike's failure, which they commonly attribute to the labor surplus caused by mass migration to Atlanta from the surrounding area, an emphasis on racial rather than class solidarity among the mills' white workers, a hardline anti-union stance from the company, and a lack of participation from rank and file strikers in strike decision-making.
[1] By 1870, the company was also producing cotton bags,[1] and in 1876, in an act of vertical integration, Elsas chartered his own textile mill in Atlanta.
[4] By the early 1900s, the mills were one of the largest in the Southern United States,[5] with the company's facility including four textile factories and several warehouse and machine shops.
[11] Factory Town was also notorious for its poor living conditions, with a general lack of sanitation and overcrowding, and outbreaks of diseases such as pellagra and tuberculosis were common.
[25][note 4] Elsas, worried about the escalating situation, agreed to negotiate with the strikers,[25] with former U.S. Secretary of the Interior M. Hoke Smith brought in as an arbitrator.
[46] Additionally, several historians note that a wave of antisemitism that had emerged in Atlanta following the 1913 trial of Leo Frank for the murder of Mary Phagan may have contributed to the increased tensions.
[47][48] Speaking about this, historian Joseph B. Atkins stated that "[i]n Atlanta, anti-Semitism contributed to a fetid atmosphere" and that "[m]any Fulton millworkers likely saw in Jacob Elsas what they had come to hate in Leo Frank".
[47] However, according to historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, while "resentment against Elsas spilled over into the outcry against Leo Frank", "there is no indication that the Fulton Mills walkout was sparked by anti-Semitism".
[61] While the initial cause of the strike concerned the reinstatement of fired union members, the strikers' demands also included reduced workhours, increased pay, improved living conditions in the company-owned housing, and end to both child labor and the employment contract at the mills.
[11] Additionally, Elsas was unwilling to compromise on the system of fines, arguing that it incentivized workers from making mistakes and promoted productivity.
[62] Concerning the workhours, union leaders pushed for a reduction from 60 to 54 hours per week, though they were pessimistic about the chances of this being implemented, as the 60-hour workweek was considered fairly standard in the textile industry at that time.
[74] Deputies from the Fulton County Sheriff's Office, with African American workers hired by the company,[75] began evicting families en masse.
[79] Photographs of African American men evicting the strikers were widely circulated in an effort, as Hall later stated, to "[appeal] to white racial solidarity".
[85] Undercover agents hired by Elsas attempted to counter this public support by gathering unsavory information on strikers and union leaders, painting them as immoral and in the wrong.
[90] Preston was so successful in his covert operations that UTW President John Golden once met with him and asked him for his opinion on the strike, and the Massachusetts Federation of Labor treated him as a delegate and guest of honor at one of their meetings.
[91] Despite the spies' efforts, the strike received support from the Men and Religion Forward Movement, a progressive Social Gospel group led by the Evangelical Ministers' Association, which represented the clergy in roughly one hundred Protestant churches in Atlanta.
[96] In an attempt to foster arbitration between the union and the company, on July 7,[97] the ministers petitioned the Commission on Industrial Relations (CIR) and the U.S. Department of Labor to send representatives to Atlanta.
[104] Additionally, around the time that Daly and Weed had arrived in Atlanta, Conboy and Kelleher were recalled to New York City by UTW President Golden, which weakened the leadership in the local union.
[107] With reduced financial support, the union shifted to housing striking workers in a tent city near the mills,[107] on property owned by a police officer who was sympathetic to the strikers.
[110] On September 2, a large thunderstorm struck Atlanta and flooded the tent city, but afterwards, the strikers made repairs and cleaned up the area, showing that despite the difficult situation and Preston's predictions, the workers were determined to the continue the strike.
[111] On October 21, the UTW held their national convention in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where the labor union planned to enact some changes to the leadership within the Atlanta strike.
[114] Additionally, company spies reported rumors that Golden was planning a walkout in January 1915 to coincide with action from the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen.
[118] That union's labor contract with Southern Railroad was set to expire on January 1, and the plan was that they would refuse to handle business for the mills until a conclusion to the strike was reached.
[120] On February 1, 1915, Golden returned to UTW's headquarters in Fall River, Massachusetts and was replaced by Conboy and Thomas Reagan, a noted union organizer.
[119] Reagan attempted to boost morale and held several rallies, but as time went on, the situation became increasingly hopeless, and on May 15, 1915, 360 days after it had started, the strike ended.
[121] The tent city was taken apart, the commissary closed, and the union provided transportation fare for remaining strikers to either return to their homes or to where they had found new employment.
[126] In discussing the failure of the strike, Fink compares the social and economic environment of the textile industry in the American South to that of the northern states.
[128] This sentiment is shared by historian Mark K. Bauman, who stated that "[t]he company successfully used race to counteract class", something that would also occur in the 1916 Atlanta streetcar strike.
[48] Additionally, the divide between long-term millworkers and the more transient employees created an irreparable rift between the strikers, which was further damaged as more people joined the union despite having never worked at the mills before.
[126] In late 1985, historians found these company records, including reports from the hired undercover agents, in the basement of the abandoned mills,[133] prompting renewed historical interest and analysis in the strike.
