Mr. SCHNEIDER. The people who belong to your union and are employed there are practically all American citizens?

Mr. CHRISTENBURY. Yes, sir; they are all American citizens.

Mr. SCHNEIDER. There are no Communists among them?
Mr. CHRISTENBURY. No, sir.

Mr. SCHNEIDER. They are peaceful people?

Mr. CHRISTENBURY. Yes, sir; they are.

Mr. SCHNEIDER. But they are forced by the circumstances and the conduct of the employer to think in different terms now of their employer, and of their Government, than they did prior to the strike? Mr. CHRISTENBURY. Yes, sir.

Mr. SCHNEIDER. They have a little different idea about the whole circumstance?

Mr. CHRISTENBURY. Yes, sir.

Mr. SCHNEIDER. And you would not be much surprised as one of the workers, would you, if the philosophy of communism appealed to them now, would you?

Mr. CHRISTENBURY. No, sir; I would not.

Mr. SCHNEIDER. That carries out the answer to some of the testimony that was given this afternoon as to why the Communists go to communities where the employers ruthlessly oppress the workers and deny them their right to belong to a union, compel them to work under miserable, un-American conditions?

Mr. CHRISTENBURY. That is correct.

Mr. SCHNEIDER. Your strike has been carried on peacefully, so far as the strike was concerned, since the inception of it?

Mr. CHRISTENBURY. It is one of the most peaceful strikes that has been known.

Mr. SCHNEIDER. Then how did you folks live since the employer has leased the available houses in the community and forced you out of the company houses?

Mr. CHRISTENBURY. Those folks could not find any places to put the stuff, so they gave them the garages off of the lots, and they took those garages and made barracks out of them, and they live in those. Mr. SCHNEIDER. And live in the shacks and in the barracks of this kind?

Mr. CHRISTENBURY. Yes, sir.

Mr. SCHNEIDER. The children live there also?

Mr. CHRISTENBURY. Yes, sir.

Mr. SCHNEIDER. Do the children go to school?
Mr. CHRISTENBURY. Those who can go do go.

But we have some

who have not got the clothing to wear to go to school in weather like we have now.

Mr. SCHNEIDER. Does the company have outside people who help in the breaking of the strike?

Mr. CHRISTENBURY. Yes, sir; they have.

Mr. SCHNEIDER. Professional strikebreakers and gunmen?

Mr. CHRISTENBURY. I do not know about the gunmen, but they

have what they call regular strikebreakers.

Mr. SCHNEIDER. Some very rough persons?

Mr. CHRISTENBURY. Yes, sir.

Mr. SCHNEIDER. They are usually employed in these industrial wars? Mr. CHRISTENBURY. Yes.

Mr. SCHNEIDER. That is all I have.

Mr. Wood. The other day a gentleman representing the 14 States. in the South, that is, representing the employers, spoke about so many beautiful gardens that the employees had and how much potatoes and vegetables and corn they raised. Just how much room is there in which to raise a garden in connection with the company houses? Do they have an acre or two of land, or how much do they have?

Mr. CHRISTENBURY. No, sir. The biggest garden I know of over in the mill village would be not much more than a quarter of an acre. Mr. WOOD. There isn't any room at all around some of these houses?

Mr. CHRISTENBURY. No, sir. We have some houses around the mill hill where there is just enough room to drive a wagon between one house and another.

Mr. WOOD. And no space to grow a garden?

Mr. CHRISTENBURY. No, sir. One can stand on one porch and pour water onto the other porch.

Mr. WOOD. What kind of houses are they?

Mr. CHRISTENBURY. Well, Brother Congressman, they have some houses there on that mill hill that have been built around 35 years They are three-room houses. Of course, they have some six-room and seven-room houses that are pretty good houses, and they were built in 1920, 1922, and 1923. But as to most of the old houses, some of them are pretty good houses but some repairs could still be made. And some are built so high up that under the back of the house you could drive a car.

Mr. Wood. The average house, I suppose, has about two or three rooms?

Mr. CHRISTENBURY. Three or four rooms. The smallest is a three-room house, and they go on up to six or seven rooms. Mr. KELLER. Next we will have Mr. L. James Johnson.

STATEMENT OF L. JAMES JOHNSON

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, in the beginning I wish to try to tell you about how I understand some of the miseries and suffering of the textile workers, because at Bath, S. C., my original home town, to where the United Merchants & Manufacturers Corporation moved machinery from Fall River, Mass., that is, to Bath and the two little towns nearby, which are about a mile away, they being Langley and Clearwater, better known as the Horse Creek Valley. Most of this machinery was moved down there in 1931 and 1932. May I say that in the boxcars in which this machinery was loaded to be moved down there there were notes pinned all around saying "We got 60 cents an hour for loading this machinery, and you will get 18 cents down South", showing that the workers up North who loaded the cars got 60 cents an hour and those down South who unloaded got 18 cents an hour.

This machinery was installed, and they started paying wages extremely low. The wages became so low that the workers at all three mills went out on strike. In fact, the skilled workers in the mill were making about $9, that is, some of them were; and we could not exist on it. At the time I was working in the mill weaving, that is, my father and myself were. I had to quit school at the age of 13 years in order to go to work.

And, by the way, I worked at night. At that time there was a South Carolina law that prohibited children under the age of 16 years working at night. I worked at night at the age of 14 years and on up to 18. Every time an inspector would come down to inspect the mill the employer would send me out somewhere, along with the rest of them, so that they could get by the State law.

We came out on strike in protest against those wages. Then this United Merchants & Manufacturers tried to break the strike, like others did; but they could not do it. We had a committee meeting one day. He did not meet the committee but he told us he would meet us as individuals. The general manager of the mill told me time and time again at that meeting he had Negroes on his farm making 60 cents a day, and we could do the same thing, and he didn't give a damn about the people working in his mill, that he had enough money to live on the rest of his life, and he didn't care whether they got anything or not.

They got countrymen and brought them in. After the strike was settled he discharged many of us. My father and myself were victims of discrimination, like many other workers there, and were evicted from the company house and the furniture set out on the street. We lived in a one-room barn in which there was no chimney and no way to have a fire during one winter. The only way we could have a fire was in a little, tiny stove.

Many workers there had those same conditions. Those were the tactics and are still the tactics used by those employers. Today there are approximately 150 workers who were workers at this one Bath mill who had been discharged and discriminated against.

They refused to go along with the ruling of both the Cotton Textile Relations Board and with the National Textile Relations Board, as well as State boards. They ignored all of them. Still they pay the low wages, like many other employers in the South.

The wages for skilled workers at this mill-not unskilled such as sweepers and cleaners, but for skilled workers-average from $10 to $13.50 and $14, but mostly down to $10, $12, or $11. Some of them do get as much as $12.50 or $13 or $14, and perhaps one out of a hundred get $16. You can't tell about that.

Those are the tactics they use.

Also at this town they have the company store and the employees have to buy most of their groceries at the company store, because they do not happen to have the gardens like the gentleman spoke of here Monday. At this company store they pay from 10 percent to 20 percent and 25 percent more than the same food would cost at other stores, that is, at the regular stores of regular merchants. Therefore, what little pay they do give the workers they get back at the company store.

I know an experience of my own while I was working there. For instance, you could buy a suit of clothes and a suit of clothes that you could buy at an average store for $15 or $20 they would charge about $25 or $27 for. And they would take $1.50 or $2 a week out of the pay envelope.

I know I bought one and paid $1.50 or $2 a week on it, and it was taken out of my envelope. And they took $12 more out of my ticket than they should have taken. In other words, I paid the bill $12 over. And I was trying to get it back, but the only way I did

get it back was to go to some of the fellows with the ticket; and the general manager, when I showed him the ticket, saw there was nothing for him to do but to return it. But if a worker does not save the tickets where it is taken out, many times they will find they take out more and get bigger profit than they got for the sale of the goods.

In some places down there they have the company stores, the company schools, the company churches, the company theaters, and then, they have the company undertaker. They take care of you under the company rule from birth until you reach the grave. And they try to impress upon the minds of the workers that they are company-owned themselves.

The mill at Langley of this company was closed down right after the N. R. A. was declared unconstitutional, and during that shut-down the company store gave each family 50 cents a week upon which to live. They said that was all they could give them. And they thought they could get by in some way with that, with whatever else they could get by begging. And I know that there were 52 cases of pellagra in that one town.

They have there some of the fine bungalows that they talk about. Some of them do not have very good roofs, and on others the steps are torn down, and many of them are just two-room houses, about 12 by 16 feet square.

The Clearwater bleachery, at Clearwater, S. C., which is owned by the same company, since N. R. A. was declared to be unconstitutional has reduced wages 10 percent, and many other workers are working 12 hours a day. They average 55 to 60 and 70 hours per week, that is, most of them, with a 10 percent reduction, as compared with what they get under N. R. A.

At this bleachery and the mills the workers have been stretched out so that now in a majority of cases one worker does the same amount of work that three workers did, therefore throwing two out of their share of employment, that is, throwing two out of three out of employment.

At the Graniteville Mill, owned by the McCampbell brothers near there, the Hickman Mill and Graniteville Mill being owned by the same company, I might say they are operating 9 hours also with a reduction in wages since N. R. A.

By the way, this was just put into effect about 2 weeks ago, that is, operating 9 hours a day with a slight reduction in wages.

In Lancaster, S. C.-and this is a mill owned by the Springs management-the workers of the mill are practically as a whole working 55 hours a week, and wages are tremendously low. A weaver had an envelope which he showed to me, just like many of the envelopes which had come to me week after week from the United Merchants of Bath, S. C. And this envelope showed this skilled weaver had made $4.50 in 32 hours on 32 looms.

This Springs mill employs about 3,000 workers. Several weeks ago, and, of course, since the ruling on N. R. A., I went to this town as an organizer and tried to organize the workers because of so many people writing me and telling me to go down there and organize the workers, that they were being stretched out and the machinery speeded up, and since N. R. A. the wages were reduced so much that they could hardly live.

I attempted to go into the town, and they arranged a meeting. When I got there I was met at the outskirts of the town by some one who told me not to go in there, that if I did I would probably get killed. When I got to the meeting place they had about 12 automobiles with an organized mob of about 6 or 7 to the car with picker sticks and other rough, hard instruments, and probably also guns to get on me. And the overseers of weaving and spinning and I can name them were the men who beat me over the head with picker sticks and said they were not going to have their men organized, that they did not want a union there and would not have it, that they would do with their workers as they pleased.

That is the attitude of many of the employers, and the majority of the employers in the South, especially, I know, where I have contacts, where the employers are fighting labor. Those are the tactics they use. They do not use only lawful tactics, but they use unlawful tactics and get down to whipping and beating and trying to kill men.

The overseer of this Springs mill told me, "If you ever come back, I will kill you. Don't you ever come back, and don't send anybody else back."

I had to go under the treatment of a doctor when I got back to Columbia. Those are the tactics of that group.

During the year 1935, along with those small wages that he paid, he received a salary which is given in a story in the Greeneville News, Greeneville, S. C.-well, the treasurer of the mill received $20,000. I cannot find the salary of the president of the company, Mr. Springs. But it was $20,000 for the treasurer while the workers were only getting a very small wage, and just enough upon which to exist.

At another mill near there, at Great Falls, wages have been reduced since the N. R. A. was declared unconstitutional approximately 10 or 15 percent, and there was the stretching out, and machinery has been speeded up in order to put out more production and lay off more workers.

The statement was made here by Mr. Gilbert on Monday, I think it was, that workers had been reemployed since the N. R. A. was declared unconstitutional. But the opposite of that is true. Instead of more workers being employed or reemployed in the southern mills more workers are being thrown out of jobs and out of work.

At this mill the overseers also organized a mob to beat me up and run me out of town and even waylaid the road and tore up my car. And they were the overseers second hands, and they got the workers drunk, and I was told by some of them that they gave them $5 apiece, and probably a gallon of liquor to get them drunk so as to beat me and drive me out of town.

At McColl and Bennettsville, S. C., wages have been reduced, and at McColl both of these mills are owned by J. K. McColl, that is, the Marlboro Mills. Mr. McColl received a salary and bonus of $96,485 for last year.

About 3 weeks ago or 4 weeks ago the workers at McColl, S. C., were reduced 25 percent, and last Monday morning the workers at Bennettsville, under the ownership of Mr. McColl, were reduced 25 percent, and the workers were discriminated against.

At Lexington, S. C., the wages of skilled workers at the Lexington Cotton Mills are now $9.50 to $13.50.