Choices and consequences
Mill operatives walked off their jobs at Atlanta's Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills complex in the spring of 1914, initiating a strike that involved not only the class conflict inherent in a labor-management dispute, but also ethnic confrontations, gender divisions, social and economic reforms, regional and sectional differences, and the textile industry's rendition of the gospel of efficiency. The year-long strike that followed was singularly well documented, partly by the reports of labor spies paid by management to gather information about striking employees and disrupt union organizing activities. Closely following dramatic confrontations in the northeastern textile industry, the Fulton Bag strike attracted national attention, drawing teams of investigators from the United States Department of Labor and from the United States Commission on Industrial Relations. Their reports are further supplemented by an unusually detailed photographic record, as both sides sought to exploit the camera to win the country's sympathy. In this richly documented volume, Gary M. Fink asks why unionism failed and why industrialists in southern textiles behaved as they did. He suggests that southern textile manufacturers believed that they existed on the brink of economic ruin. The insecurities bred by that assumption, combined with their fervent belief in private property rights, dictated a specific approach to industrial relations.
