Silk Strike

Slow and orderly but pregnant with violence was the start of a Communist strike last week in Paterson, N. J., great silk manufacturing centre of the U. S. Sponsor for the walkout was William Zebulon Foster's radical National Textile Workers' Union whose agents and inciters took such woe and bloodshed to the cotton textile industry in and around Gastonia, N. C. two years ago (TIME, April 8, 1929 et seq.). Paterson's hard streets are historically fertile soil for labor disturbances; twice within the last decade have they been harrowed by major textile strikes.

Of Paterson's 20,000 silk workers only 800 answered the Red call the first day. Picket lines were formed. Police let the organizers harangue their followers in vacant lots so long as they did not block traffic. Only one stone was thrown through a factory window. By the second day the strikers' ranks numbered some 2,000. When a group of agitators crossed the city line into Clifton, N. J. and began demonstrations outside the Henry Doherty Mills, 24 of them were arrested, jailed in default of $2 fines.

The Red silk strikers demanded: eight-hour day, five-day week, 40% wage increase. They complained that they were now worked 9 1/2 to 14 hrs. per day for a wage that began at $12 per week. Most of the operators of Paterson's silk mills, large & small, almost welcomed the strike as an excuse to shut down their plants.

A large and complicating factor in the Paterson situation was that the conservative American Federation of Labor's two Unions in the field, the United Textile Workers and the Amalgamated Associated Silk Workers, had also voted to strike for practically the same demands as the National Textile Workers. Last week the A. F. of L. organizers watched the Communist walkout closely, advanced their own strike date to this week when 10,000 more Paterson silk workers are expected to quit.

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