Between the Wheels: Quest for Streetcar Unionism in the Carolina Piedmont, 1919--1922
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Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports 2009 Between the wheels: Quest for streetcar unionism in the Carolina Piedmont, 1919--1922 Jeffrey M. Leatherwood West Virginia University Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd Recommended Citation Leatherwood, Jeffrey M., "Between the wheels: Quest for streetcar unionism in the Carolina Piedmont, 1919--1922" (2009). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 4489. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/4489 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by the The Research Repository @ WVU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you must obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Dissertation has been accepted for inclusion in WVU Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports collection by an authorized administrator of The Research Repository @ WVU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Between the Wheels: Quest for Streetcar Unionism in the Carolina Piedmont, 1919-1922 Jeffrey M. Leatherwood Dissertation submitted to the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in American History Kenneth Fones-Wolf, Ph.D., Chair Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Ph.D. Michal McMahon, Ph.D. Peter Carmichael, Ph.D. Gerald Schwartz, Ph.D. Department of History Morgantown, West Virginia 2009 ABSTRACT Between the Wheels: Quest for Streetcar Unionism in the Carolina Piedmont, 1919-1922 Jeffrey M. Leatherwood Between the Wheels examines three Carolina Piedmont streetcar strikes in 1919-22. These years were marked by the aspirations of workers for industrial democracy, corporate anti- labor backlash and by the first Red Scare. Inevitably, these trends swept through the Carolina Piedmont, long viewed as isolated and resistant toward progress. But scholars should now re- examine the New South in light of broader American context. Three case studies in Spartanburg and Columbia, South Carolina, and Charlotte, North Carolina, highlight the struggles of New South labor reformers against union-busting monopolists, exemplified by James B. Duke. During World War I, many Carolina Piedmont entrepreneurs viewed labor unionism as a direct threat to their well-entrenched system of exploitation and paternalism. Mill owners and their investors feared that successful streetcar unions could lead to renewed efforts to organize their textile mills. While Piedmont streetcar workers represented mere hundreds of skilled employees, regional textile mills employed thousands more unskilled workers, who were usually low-paid and poorly-treated by their employers and foremen. After World War I, Carolina streetcar employees and textile workers forged an informal alliance in opposition to Southern Power and other corporate interests. The Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees (AASERE) met with resistance when its organizers sought to unionize the Piedmont‟s urban streetcar workers. In Charlotte, Southern Public Utilities Inc. employed armed strikebreakers, in defiance of the city‟s compromise solution. On the evening of August 25, 1919, Charlotte police officers and strikebreakers fired into a crowd of angry demonstrators, killing five men and wounding over twenty others. National Guardsmen quickly restored order in North Charlotte. Charlotte‟s debacle resulted in setbacks for the struggling labor movement in the Carolina Piedmont. Over the next three years, textile mills crushed similar unionization efforts, while embryonic streetcar unions withered on the vine in Charlotte, Winston-Salem, and Durham, North Carolina. By 1922, this pattern of regression profoundly affected South Carolina, dislodging streetcar unions in Spartanburg and Columbia, where previous labor gains had resulted in partial or full recognition. By the 1930s, these New South streetcar lines faced oblivion due to financial receiverships and the rise of automobiles. Table of Contents Page Abstract………………………………………………………………………. ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………..……. v Chapter One: Between the Wheels………...……………...…………..…….. 1 Chapter Two: Superpowers of the New South ……..………….……….…… 18 Chapter Three: Labor Forward in the Piedmont Carolinas…………………….. 55 Chapter Four: The Great War Comes Home ………………………………….. 85 Chapter Five: Grant Us a Contract …………………………...……………….. 109 Chapter Six: Battle of the Barn……………………………………………....... 135 Chapter Seven: All Covered With Rust ……..………………………………… 185 Chapter Eight: Epilogue and Conclusions …………………………………….. 210 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………. 232 iv Acknowledgements: Between the Wheels began in 2003 as my first graduate research paper on the Charlotte Streetcar Strike of 1919, supervised and nurtured by Dr. Gerald Schwartz at Western Carolina University. By the time I matriculated at West Virginia University for my doctoral program in 2004, my expanded term paper had been presented at conferences, not to mention an appearance in Western Carolina University‟s Tuskasegee Valley Historical Review. Little did I know how much more familiar I would become with its subject matter over the next five years! At West Virginia University, Dr. Kenneth Fones-Wolf took an avid professional interest in my streetcar labor research. He guided my initial prospectus, encouraged my new angles of inquiry into Spartanburg and Columbia, South Carolina, and coached me on how to develop my dissertation chapters for possible publication. I also received generous support from the WVU Robbins Fellowship endowment in 2008, the same year my chapter on Spartanburg achieved publication in the South Carolina Historical Association journal. These two developments were confidence boosters, spurring me to complete my principal writing in less than two years. I would like to thank my dissertation board, including Ken Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Michal McMahon, Peter Carmichael, and especially Gerry Schwartz for supporting this project from its inception. West Virginia University‟s History Department has been a source of inspiration and support, and I would also like to single v out Chuck Dusch and Michael Buseman for being such great colleagues and friends throughout my graduate career in Morgantown. Primary documents are essential to historical research, and this work would not exist without the generous assistance rendered by these institutions and personages: WVU‟s Wise Library and its West Virginia History & Regional History Collection; University of South Carolina‟s Caroliniana Library at the “Horseshoe” in Columbia; the South Carolina Archives located on Parkland Road; Sheila Christopher and the Duke Energy Library in Charlotte; the Downtown Charlotte Public Library for making available their extensive newspaper archives; UNC at Chapel Hill‟s Louis Round Wilson Library for providing Allen Tullos‟s three interviews with Southern Public Utilities workers; University of Wisconsin at Madison for their kind inter-library loans of Motorman & Conductor magazines on microfilm; lastly, the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington D.C. for providing valuable Department of Labor documents pertaining to Charlotte. If I have omitted any persons or institutions that rendered assistance to this dissertation, then I apologize to them in advance. I would also like to show appreciation to two individuals who served as living connections to the principal actors and events of the Charlotte Streetcar Strike, almost ninety years after it took place. Ann Ritch Brantley and Samuel S. McNinch III shared personal reminiscences of their respective family members. Marvin Lee Ritch and Frank Ramsey McNinch remain two of the Piedmont‟s most fascinating historical figures, and each merits a biographer who can do their careers justice. During the spring of 2007, my father passed away in Waynesville, North Carolina. Grady D. Leatherwood was a native son of Western North Carolina, with vi family members spread across the Blue Ridge Mountains as well as the Carolina Piedmont. This dissertation is hereby dedicated to my father‟s memory. I also express deep gratitude to my mother-in-law, Elaine Sherrill Rohr, for her archival knowledge and belief in my scholarly potential. Lastly, my wife, Jennifer E. Beck, deserves a special recognition for her longstanding emotional and intellectual support. vii Chapter 1: Between the Wheels In late June 1919, Albert Essex Jones, special organizer for the streetcar workers‟ union, arrived in Spartanburg, South Carolina. His arrival heralded the American Federation of Labor‟s most ambitious campaign in a region long perceived as hostile toward unionism. For nearly a decade, the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees (AASERE) had sought, without much success, to organize the Carolina Piedmont. In early July, Spartanburg‟s streetcar workers declared a strike. Partly owned by James B. Duke‟s Southern Power, South Carolina Light, Power, and Railway (SCLP&R) supplied both power and transportation for local textile mills. Manager Franklin H. Knox engaged strikebreakers, but South Carolina‟s governor, Robert A. Cooper, interceded before serious violence overwhelmed Spartanburg.