The 1928 New Bedford textile strike was a mass work stoppage of approximately 30,000 machinery operatives in several of the large cotton mills located in

New Bedford, Massachusetts New Bedford (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ) is a city in Bristol County, Massachusetts, Bristol County, Massachusetts. It is located on the Acushnet River in what is known as the South Coast (Massachusetts), South Coast region. Up throug ...

, USA. The strike, which ran for several months during the spring and summer of 1928, is remembered for the prominent role played by the Workers (Communist) Party of America in mobilizing the immigrant workers of the region. The strike began April 16, 1928, over a proposed 10 percent wage cut for factory operatives. Strikers demanded not only the abolition of the planned cut in wages but a 20 percent wage increase and implementation of the 40-hour work week. After considerable controversy control of the strike passed from the Communist-led Textile Mill Committee (TMC) to sundry craft unions affiliated with the

American Federation of Labor The American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L.) was a national federation of labor unions in the United States that continues today as the AFL-CIO. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions eager to provide mutu ...

. The strike ended in early October when negotiators for the seven non-Communist craft unions representing the strikers accepted the offer of mill owners for a 5 percent wage cut and promises of 30 days' notice before implementation of any further wage reductions. After ratifying the contract over the weekend, strikers defied a last ditch TMC effort to derail the agreement and returned to work on Monday, October 8. As a radical-led labor stoppage in the American textile industry, the New Bedford strike was the successor to the 1926 Passaic strike and the precursor to the 1929 Gastonia strike, both of which tumultuous events are better remembered to history.

History

Background

During the 19th Century the coastal city of

New Bedford New Bedford (Massachusett: ) is a city in Bristol County, Massachusetts. It is located on the Acushnet River in what is known as the South Coast region. Up through the 17th century, the area was the territory of the Wampanoag Native American pe ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

, emerged as the largest

whaling Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution. It was practiced as an organized industry ...

port in the world.Daniel Georgianna with Roberta Hazen Aaronson, ''The Strike of '28.'' New Bedford, MA: Spinner Publications, 1993; pg. 12. Some 10,000 seamen shipped from New Bedford to kill and process

whale Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and ...

s into oil for lighting and machine lubricants and bone for use in

corset A corset is a support garment commonly worn to hold and train the torso into a desired shape, traditionally a smaller waist or larger bottom, for aesthetic or medical purposes (either for the duration of wearing it or with a more lasting effe ...

s. The life was difficult and hard for whaling ship crews but lucrative for shipbuilders, shipowners, and merchants, and the local economy prospered. The situation began to change in the years after the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

, however, with the profitability of whaling falling dramatically with the discovery and widespread manufacture of

kerosene Kerosene, paraffin, or lamp oil is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid which is derived from petroleum. It is widely used as a fuel in aviation as well as households. Its name derives from el, κηρός (''keros'') meaning "wax", and was regi ...

for fuel and

petroleum Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crud ...

-based

machine oil A lubricant (sometimes shortened to lube) is a substance that helps to reduce friction between surfaces in mutual contact, which ultimately reduces the heat generated when the surfaces move. It may also have the function of transmitting forces, t ...

for use as a lubricant.Georgianna and Aaronson, ''The Strike of '28,'' pg. 13. An increased emphasis began being placed on obtaining

baleen Baleen is a filter-feeding system inside the mouths of baleen whales. To use baleen, the whale first opens its mouth underwater to take in water. The whale then pushes the water out, and animals such as krill are filtered by the baleen and ...

for corsets, which mandated trips to Arctic waters where baleen whales proliferated. This would end catastrophically in the winter of 1871, when an early return of ice on the ocean trapped and annihilated the entire Arctic fleet, including 32 ships based in New Bedford. A second, smaller catastrophe followed in 1876, resulting in the loss of 12 more ships. By the end of the 1870s prosperous shipbuilders and merchants were looking to leave the dying and unprofitable whaling industry in favor of new forms of capital investment. Other cities throughout the Northeastern region during the second half of the 19th Century based their local economies upon textile manufacturing, with some 600 mills being scattered across the region by the start of the 1860s.Georgianna and Aaronson, ''The Strike of '28,'' pg. 19. Other lower cost mills dotted the

American South The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...

, staffed by a labor force willing to accept lesser wages in the wake of a collapsed post-war economy. These mills specialized in low cost, easily produced cotton goods of middling quality, leaving an opening in the marketplace for finely produced cotton textiles. It was to the manufacture of these finer milled goods that New Bedford investors turned when the local economy pivoted from the manufacture of whale oil to fabrics. While the Wamsutta Mills, established in 1846, predated the turn of the local economy from whaling to textile making, between 1880 and the coming of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

the pioneer firm had been joined by another 32 companies, valued at a massive $100 million and employing 30,000 people. The industry prospered and New Bedford boomed in the four decades after 1880, growing in population from 40,000 to more than 120,000. Many of these new arrivals were immigrants — English, Irish, and Germans with prior experience in the milling industry, followed later by French-Canadians, Poles, Syrians, and Portuguese (including the descendants of former slaves from the Portuguese colonies of

the Azores ) , motto =( en, "Rather die free than subjected in peace") , anthem= ( en, "Anthem of the Azores") , image_map=Locator_map_of_Azores_in_EU.svg , map_alt=Location of the Azores within the European Union , map_caption=Location of the Azores wi ...

and Cabo Verde).Georgianna and Aaronson, ''The Strike of '28,'' pg. 22. Very few American blacks worked in the mills of New Bedford, with one 1900 survey counting just 25 out of a population of just over 11,000 factory workers. These workers lived in densely populated neighborhoods at the north and south of the city, with the owning and financial class living in the prosperous city center.Georgianna and Aaronson, ''The Strike of '28,'' pg. 24.

Wage cut and work stoppage

During the middle years of the 1920s, competitive pressure in the era of post-

deflation kept wages of factory operatives unusually low, with the Massachusetts Department of Labor reporting average weekly wages for New Bedford textile workers of $19.95.Philip S. Foner, ''History of the Labor Movement in the United States: Volume 10: The TUEL, 1925-1929.'' New York: International Publishers, 1994; pg. 164. Things deteriorated further during the first three months of 1928, with that same governmental body making note of a further weekly wage fall to just $19.00. Local employers, feeling the pressure of modern factories in the low-wage South sought further wage reductions in an effort to remain competitive.Foner, ''History of the Labor Movement in the United States: Volume 10,'' pg. 165. In April 1928 united action was enacted by the New Bedford Cotton Manufacturers' Association in unilaterally slashing wages a further 10 percent across the board. This cut was met by the collective action of the New Bedford Textile Council, which approved a work stoppage slated to begin on Monday, April 16, 1928 by a vote of 2,571 to 188.Associated Press
"Textile Workers Strike Monday,"
''Fitchburg ASentinel,'' April 13, 1928, pg. 25. The job stoppage in protest of the proposed 10 percent cut in wages to affect almost all of the 30,000 workers employed in the cotton, rayon, and woolen mills of New Bedford. Seven craft unions directly represented about 8,000 of New Bedford's textile workers. These included locals of the American Federation of Textile Operatives, an independent organization. The deteriorating wage situation spurred militance in many of these locals, however, and in April and May 1928 a move was made to join the

United Textile Workers The United Textile Workers of America (UTW) was a North American trade union established in 1901. History The United Textile Workers of America was founded following two conferences in 1901 under the aegis of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) ...

(UTW), a larger and more potent labor organization affiliated with the

(AFL). Most of the minority of New Bedford workers who were unionized ahead of the 1928 strike were from the highly skilled trades — loom fixers, weavers, warp twisters, and the like — who were generally native-born and English-speaking. Those unorganized were more often than not unskilled or low skilled immigrants, forced to perform the dirtiest and most monotonous jobs and barred by union protection by the rigid craft structure of the New Bedford union movement.

Development

Resolution

Legacy

Footnotes

External links

* Joe Silva
"New Bedford's Forgotten History,"
NewBedfordGuide.com/ April 4, 2013. {{DEFAULTSORT:1928 New Bedford textile strike Textile and clothing labor disputes in the United States 1928 labor disputes and strikes 1928 in Massachusetts April 1928 events New Bedford, Massachusetts History of Bristol County, Massachusetts History of the Communist Party USA Labor disputes in Massachusetts United Textile Workers of America