Labor

The founders of Atlanta were their own workmen. Though built in the midst of a slave State, the town was fiercely proud of its independence and vitality, and its social aspect was essentially democratic. No newcomer to the city was ashamed to build his own hut or store and personally perform all the daily tasks necessary to a pioneer living. This was largely because most of Atlanta's settlers were migratory workers, accustomed to shift for themselves, while those few early citizens of means were Northerners opposed to slave labor.

In 1847 Atlanta had a population of 2,500 and Dr. William White, a school teacher from New York State, wrote in his diary of that year: "There are not 100 Negroes in the place, and white men black their own shoes and dust their own clothes independently as in the North. All through the upper part of Georgia the labor is done almost entirely by white hands. Carpenters get but ten shillings a day here and labor commands about the same price as at the North. "

The few Negroes in Atlanta during the town's early days were freed slaves. Trained on the plantations as wainwrights and blacksmiths, they were theoretically free to follow these callings in the hope of accumulating enough money to purchase the freedom of their wives, children, and other relatives still held in bondage. They were rarely successful at making a living, however, and the majority of them returned to the plantations. Some farmers in the vicinity were accustomed to send their slaves into town to peddle produce on the streets. The fact that the city council in 1850 placed a tax of $1 on each Negro sold in the slave market on Alabama Street indicates that the trade was active, but these slaves were rarely purchased for work in the city.

Several years before the War between the States it became fashionable for owners of outlying plantations to build houses and send their families to Atlanta for residence at various seasons of the year. A family was accompanied usually by a young Negro girl who acted as ladies' maid, a mature Negro woman to cook and do the house cleaning, and a grizzled darky who performed the duties of handyman and carriage driver.

During the War between the States, Atlanta became the chief military supply base of the Confederacy and business boomed. But, with most of the young men in the army or engaged in the manufacture of war supplies, there was a serious shortage of labor in the less important fields of industry. Many an older Atlanta business man doffed his coat for a clerk's apron and left his executive desk to work behind the sales counter.

Shortly after the war thousands of free issue Negroes crowded Atlanta awaiting the division of confiscated lands which had been promised them by the carpetbaggers. Disaster was their lot. With no means of support, drinking and carousing day and night, running wild and living in filth, hundreds of them perished from starvation and disease. The Freedmen's Bureau helped some, building shelters, feeding and caring for the homeless, and sending many to other sections of the country where there was more opportunity for employment. A few Negroes, trained in various mechanical callings on the plantations, found their way into industry. Many, however, were forced to return to their former owners where, facing the contempt of the older slaves who had remained loyal to their masters, they helped rebuild the ruined mansions and replant the devastated fields.

So it was that during Reconstruction potential labor went idle while professional and businessmen carried mortar, bricks, and timber to repair their residences and shops. Lack of money furthered lack of employment, and the carpetbagger administration of Governor Bullock did nothing to improve the labor situation. After his resignation and flight in 1871, business took confidence and there was considerable expansion. A census of that year shows that 75 firms were employing 846 men, 44 women, and 126 children in Fulton County. The average weekly wage was $8.42.

The decade of the 1870's brought about a sounder reconstruction program. As Southerners recouped their fortunes, older business houses were re-established, while many new ventures, founded with speculative Yankee money, failed. Reconstruction was physical as well as financial. Scores of buildings and houses that had been hastily repaired after the war were torn down, and new structures were erected in their places. The construction industries boomed, providing employment for thousands of workers.

A social evil which arose during this decade and had far-reaching effects upon labor was the system whereby the State leased convicts to private employers. Originally intended as a humanitarian move to rehabilitate the criminal, the practice quickly degenerated into one of abuse and selfish gain. In return for a small per capita annuity paid to the State (ten or twelve dollars per year) the leaser worked the convicts from sunup to sundown with no other expense than the provision of food and shelter. Supervision was often brutal, and many convicts died from neglect or flogging. Since free labor could in no way compete with this enforced service, a general lowering of wage standards followed. In 1873 a survey showed that, although 800 mechanics in the city were out of work, trains were almost daily bringing in additional convict labor.

Some slight progress was made toward organization of workers, however, when a small union of factory workers was formed. In the summer of 1873 members of the Typographical Union struck in protest against the dismissal of a foreman and two printers from the staff of the Atlanta Herald, a newspaper edited by Henry W. Grady. When the owners of the paper threatened to suspend publication permanently, the union members returned to work, and the defeat of this abortive strike was considered a triumph for the open shop. But the workers had been impressed by their own audacity in even daring to strike, and they were determined to gain strength for later and more telling efforts.

In 1880 labor conditions had improved considerably in actual employment, but wage scales were still low. In that year Atlanta had 196 manufacturing establishments that employed 3,68o hands, including 538 women and 394 children. But the average wage was only $4.65 a week. Computed on the basis that each of these workers, including children, represented a then typical family of five, estimates show that of Atlanta's 37,409 population in that year almost exactly one half were existing upon substandard incomes.

Under such conditions organization among the workers changed from a mere desire into a compelling necessity. But, although various trades organized local chapters under the leadership of the Knights of Labor, these were but short-lived. Organization among Southern workers was still too new to engender an effective feeling of unity, but unionization was growing. In February 1884, the Woman's Industrial Union was organized to teach working girls how to sew, cook, and perform other duties, paying them while they learned. It was claimed by the union that a girl earning 15 to 20¢ a day in a factory could easily make 75¢ a day after being vocationally trained in the union school. In April of the same year the Women's Industrial Union expanded to establish the Woman's Exchange, a shop which afforded the unemployed women of Atlanta an opportunity to sell homemade articles. Heartened by the success of these ventures, existing unions also introduced training schools.

In 1888 an independent union, the first of its kind in the United States, was formed by 19 machinists of Atlanta. By the following year chapters had been organized throughout the Nation and in Canada, and the name was changed accordingly to the International Association of Machinists. Also in this year the International Brotherhood of Blacksmiths, Drop Forgers, and Helpers was organized in the city.

With the expansion of industry in the 1890's, fresh impetus was given to organization among labor. In 1891 workers representing the carpenters, molders, plasterers, tailors, and typographical unions formed a central body known as the Atlanta Federation of Trades. By the turn of the century unionization had been achieved among railway employees, newspaper workers, book and job printers, and many other trades. But, as usual when wage standards and purchasing power are high, interest in organization lagged and many of the unions were short-lived. The depression of 1908, however, brought about a revival of interest, causing the organization of many new locals and a strengthening of the existing ones. By 1910 organized labor had become a power that could not be disregarded.

In 1916 Atlanta experienced its most spectacular strike. In September of that year the motormen and conductors of the Georgia Power Company struck for union recognition, shorter hours, higher wages, freedom from compulsory membership in a company "benevolent association," and "political freedom." Cars were abandoned on the tracks, and when the company hired non-union men to operate them, these relief crews were immediately pulled from the cars. Trolleys were cut, poles were sawed down, rocks were piled on the tracks, and rails were soaped and spiked. Some cars were peppered with gun shot, a few were dynamited. Opposing mobs jammed the downtown streets and hundreds of deputies were sworn in to preserve order. This state of affairs continued for about two months with city transportation completely demoralized. Injuries were inevitable, and, as a result strike leaders and scores of union sympathizers were jailed. On December 23, a compromise was reached in which the most significant clause provided, an increase in pay. But union recognition and the rehiring of men laid off for their union activities were not granted.

Resentment growing from these denials brought about a second strike in July of 1918. After a four-day tie-up of trolley service, a satisfactory agreement was reached between the power company and its workers. Since then the local chapter of the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees of America has become one of the largest, strongest, and best-ordered unions in the city, and the relationship between the power company and its employees has been almost ideal.

Although employment boomed during World War I, labor made no contractual gains because of a shortage of workers and extensive camp-building and munitions developments. Strikes in the war industries were handled in a summary manner, often being suppressed by the Federal Government. Workers in less important industries dared not make any drastic moves, knowing that public opinion would be almost united against them in this critical time. During the boom period of the 192o's the unions did not lapse into the lethargy usually so characteristic of prosperous years. Dues in arrears were paid up and much of the money was spent in a program of organization expansion. Industry, operating at peak production, willingly made many concessions to organized labor, and few strikes marked this period.

The early years of the depression had as disastrous an effect upon organized labor as upon all other phases of national life. The chaos and financial stress caused by thousands of members being thrown out of work was aggravated by the influx of laid-off farm hands who flocked to the city seeking any kind of employment and concerned not at all with unionism. Many groups split over strike issues, feeling that conditions were too precarious to risk jeopardizing their jobs further by radical voluntary action. On the other hand, many union leaders felt that drastic action was necessary to insure the rights of labor. As a result, the first half of the decade of the 1930's was a period of constant strikes, many of which were, for the first time, marked by racial prejudice.

A significant example of this new trend was the formation of The American Fascisti Association and the Order of Black Shirts, an organization founded in Atlanta in 1930 by a group of men who had no legitimate connection with recognized labor movements. Their immediate object was to drive the Negroes out of industry and replace them with white workers. Appealing as it did to the misery and self-pity of the more ignorant unemployed white men who had always regarded the Negro as an economic menace, the Black Shirt association swept the State and, in a few short weeks, claimed a membership of 27,000. Although some employers heeded the demands of the BlackShirts , the majority did not and, as soon as it became apparent that the organization could not create work for them, members withdrew.

In July 1932, Angelo Herndon, a young Negro Communist, led a demonstration of white and Negro unemployed on the steps of the Fulton County Courthouse. Although the gathering was orderly and city council recognized and granted its demands for continued work relief, Herndon as its leader was arrested and charged with attempting to incite insurrection. Many groups throughout the country came to his defense, and in time the case assumed international proportions. After five years of alternate imprisonment and freedom on bail, Herndon was acquitted by a ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States.

The middle 1930's was a period of great labor agitation. On September 6, 1934, all textile mills in the Atlanta area, except the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills, were closed. This was a natural extension of the mill strike conditions which prevailed throughout the State at that time. The workers' demands were the usual ones— shorter hours and higher wages. After two hectic weeks marked by a declaration of martial law, the throwing of tear-gas bombs, and the arrest of hundreds of strikers, the demonstration was called off. But for the next several years hardly a season passed without a strike in some Atlanta textile mill or garment factory.

With the rise of the Committee for Industrial Organization (now the Congress of Industrial Organizations) in 1935, the labor stage in Atlanta became a scene of great activity. Many established unions, feeling that the new industrial organizations offered more strength and security than the old trade unions, wished to affiliate with the C.I.O. The result was a split in the ranks of the Georgia Federation of Labor. In April 1937, William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, ruled that A. Steve Nance, president of the Georgia Federation of Labor, was ineligible to preside over the annual State convention being held that month because he had become Southeastern director of a C.I.O. body, the Textile Workers Organizing Committee. The various unions immediately chose sides, some supporting Nance and others denying his leadership. For a time there were two groups each claiming to be the real Georgia Federation of Labor. This state of affairs continued until shortly after Nance's death in April 1938. Some of the alienated textile workers returned to the A.F. of L., but many remained in the C.I.O.

In the meantime, many other unions affiliated with the C.I.O. This caused the A.F. of L. to begin its own intensive drives to enlist groups who were for the first time becoming aware of the importance of labor and were seeking leadership. The contest between the two labor movements has been marked by considerable anger and mutual disparagement, but it has been a stimulating conflict, bringing many new workers into the ranks of labor and causing many old-line members of the union to regard their organizations more seriously. Only the campaigning engendered by fierce rivalry could have brought about the organization of the textile workers and other groups which had been long neglected or had remained indifferent to the labor movement.

In November 1936, the United Automobile Workers of America, a C.I.O. body, staged one of the first sit-down strikes in America in-the Fisher Body Company, Atlanta. The strike lasted three months and ended when the company granted every demand of the union. These included recognition of the union, 100 per cent raise in wages, establishment of a minimum wage, recognition of seniority rights, restoration of jobs to men dismissed because of union activities, establishment of a grievance procedure, control of the speed-up system, and the granting of vacations with pay.

Encouraged by their success, the automobile workers undertook the task of organizing groups of workers in entirely unrelated industries under the C.I.O. banner. At present 12 separate groups comprising 18 local chapters are so organized. These include workers in the automobile, steel, aluminum, rubber, furniture, textile, quarrying, meat-packing, communications, and garment industries, as well as office and professional and Federal workers. Two of the groups, the aluminum and rubber unions, are composed of Negroes.

The C.I.O. now maintains a council in Atlanta in which all city unions are represented. Its function is to co-ordinate the activities of the various unions, to discuss plans for further organization, and to hold educational programs. The A.F. of L. is represented by 100 local unions with an approximate membership of 20,000. A central body known as the Atlanta Federation of Trades functions in a manner similar to the C.I.O. council.

In recent years the Georgia League of Progressive Democracy, an affiliate of the national Non-Partisan League, has been bringing the unions Into closer contact with civic clubs and other groups. This league is composed of representatives from both the C.I.O. and A.F. of L, organizations.

The record of recent strikes in local industries is negligible compared with the national labor agitation. During the period from 1934 through 1938 there were only 24 strikes in the city. These involved 4,845 workers who were laid off for a total of 98,808 man days. Eight of the strikes were called because of wage and hour conditions, 11 were declared for union recognition, and 5 were due to miscellaneous causes.

Labor statistics for 1930 show that there were 50,617 gainfully employed workers in Atlanta proper, of which 24,285 were women. The approximate pay roll total for that year was $200,000,000.

In addition to State-wide labor legislation, various city laws regulate Atlanta workers in certain industries and trades. These apply to plumbers, barber and beauty shop operators, and workers who handle foodstuffs.

Contents