Textile Trial

A dusty motor bus last week rumbled up the highway from Gastonia to Charlotte, N. C. Its passengers were 16 young Communists, three of them women. All were prisoners of the State of North Carolina. All were charged with first-degree murder.

At Charlotte they were put on trial for their lives. Radical organizations throughout the land screamed that the case was "a vicious capitalistic frame-up." North Carolina justice bent backward to preserve impartiality, to prevent the remotest semblance of another Sacco-Vanzetti case.

The murder charge grew out of the textile strike at Gastonia last Spring. Ejected from their company homes, strikers fretted the police, pitched a tent colony on the outskirts of the town. On the night of June 7. Gastonia's Chief of Police Orville F. Aderholt went to the encampment. A fight with strikers ensued. Chief Aderholt was shot and killed. Three of his aides were wounded.

The State charged that its prisoners, eight of whom were Communist labor organizers, eight striking mill operatives, had conspired to murder Chief Aderholt, had even lured him by an anonymous telephone call to the encampment for that purpose.

So bitter was the feeling against the defendants in Gastonia that the case had been moved to Charlotte for trial (TIME, August 12). On the bench sat Superior

Court Judge Morris Victor Barnhill, 41, tall, clean-cut, smooth-faced. No old codger, he was the State's youngest jurist, especially selected by Governor Oliver Max Gardner for this trial. Between sessions of court he clapped on a flying helmet, went out to the Charlotte airport, took his first airplane ride.

At the trial's opening the defense won one large victory: when Judge Barnhill limited murder evidence to the occurrences of June 7. This hampered the State's attempt to prove the inception and growth of an alleged conspiracy. It also barred out the political, social and economic background of the defendants. Forced to file a new bill of particulars the prosecution retreated from its charge that the strikers had actually summoned Chief Aderholt to their tent colony for slaughter, contended instead that they were confederated together to murder if and when he came.

The trial started slowly because of difficulty in selecting the jury. Again and again a court clerk intoned the old ritual: "Juror, look upon the defendants. Defendants, look upon the juror. Do you like him?" In four days, 195 persons were examined. Each venireman was quizzed sharply on his labor beliefs, his religion, his opinion of circumstantial evidence. When backwoodsmen, called for jury duty, expressed surprise at hearing that Chief Aderholt was dead, Judge Barnhill snapped: "Where are you gentlemen from?"

By the end of the week only seven men were in the jury box-two farmers, a steelworker, a grocer's clerk, a news butcher, a union carpenter, a union mill worker.

Judge Barnhill had trouble with Tom P. Jimson and Arthur Garfield Hays, defense counsel. Attorney Jimson, wearing a flaming red tie and a red flower in his buttonhole, circulated a statement in the court room to the effect that the prosecution was "trying to fool the public into believing it is nothing but a murder trial" when "after all, this case is a Labor case and will take its place in history with the notable struggles of American working men against oppression and exploitation." Judge Barnhill gently reproved Lawyer Jimson "for giving out interviews in regard to the conduct of this trial."

When one juryman insisted all the defendants were guilty, Lawyer Hays turned to Defendant Sophie Melvin, 19, ordered her to stand up, cried to the juryman: "Do you mean to say this little girl is guilty of murder?" Judge Barnhill had to reprove him, too, for indulging in "dramatics."

But for all the professional agitation of the Communists for the defense, there was little or no bad feeling in the court room. Judge Barnhill from the bench read an invitation from the Charlotte Civilian Club for all present (except the prisoners) to attend a luncheon at the Chamber of Commerce. Court was adjourned as rival counsel, press correspondents and Judge Barnhill trooped off to the entertainment, all in a most fraternal mood.