If
you go to Atlanta in search of the Atlanta Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills you will
see a much different world from the early 20th century. Yet, the Mills and the village still
exist today. Today, the district
is known as Cabbagetown and the old Mills have been turned into Lofts for young
professionals. The history of the
Mills and the strike that occurred from 1914 to 1915 are unique to the Atlanta
area. Even through the strike
ultimately lost; the strike was regional the largest strike and drew national
attention tying it into the national Labor struggle of America. However, the strike at Fulton Bags and
Cotton Mills is largely forgotten.
Fulton Bags and Cotton Mills began production in the early 1880’s under the guidance of Jacob Elsas. Mr. Elsas was a Jewish German immigrant from Cincinnati, who had joined the Union and was apart of Sherman’s March to the Sea. Elsas never made it to the sea, Sherman ordered Elsas’s regiment to stay in Carterville’s to watch and guard the supply line. Always looking for an opportunity to better him-self, Elsas saw a chance to create a manufacturing business. With the help of a fellow Jewish German immigrant Issac May, he enter the business world of Atlanta in the post war years. Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills was built just outside of the Atlanta city which allowed the Management to construct a Mill village to house the workers. The workers that came to work were from the countryside and lower Appalachia once independent farmers. As Atlanta’s population increased after the Civil War the cost of living increased, which led to increased poverty and unemployment. The labors worked mostly on a Family Wage System. By 1914 the standard workweek was 64 hours with carders earning “an average weekly wages $8.59, spinners $6.94, and weavers $10.01;” however, since paid was based on a piecework completion workers “pay varied greatly.”[1]
Strikers’ objections were to working conditions included faulty machinery, overheated rooms, poor living conditions, child labor, and management practices. Management by the time of the strike was under Jacob Elsas’s son Oscar Elsas. While Jacob Elsas grow up in poverty and could relate to some of the concerns of the workers, Oscar was raised in affluence. He attended classes at Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but returned to Atlanta to graduate in the first class at Georgia Institute of Technology. Oscar learned the techniques of the industrial leaders of the North and was concerned only with increasing production. Unlike other Mill owners of the South, Oscar isolated himself from the world of the workers living in the rich side of town.
Although there had been earlier strikes they were all shorted lived. Management was increasingly frustrated with the workers attempts to join the United Textile Workers. Management’s control over the workforce, compromised of mostly once independent farmers, was not greeted well by the workers. In 1914 the weavers were the first to walkout and followed by the loom fixers. The strikers demanded increased wages, a 54 hour work week, and a decrease in the use of child labor. In response the management “turned out 78 families (a total of 218 workers-men, women, and children) from the mill villages.”[2] Soon the strikers gained national attention and union organizers come to Atlanta to assist the strikers. The union leaders set up Tent Camp for the evicted strikers, which lasted for 8 months out lasting any tent camp set up in the South before. Management used spies and espionage to monitor mill workers and strikers but also in attempts to incite violence and take over leadership. The most infamous spy was Harry Preston. Harry Preston successfully infiltrated the union leadership and reported directly to Oscar Elsas. Ultimately according to Gary Fink, the strike failed because of factors such “as the availability of cheap labor the implacability of management, the transience of the workforce, the shortcomings and miscalculations of union organizers, and the active intervention of labor spies.”[3]
Although the legacy of the 1914-1915 Strike at Atlanta’s Fulton Mills maybe unknown to most, the strike at the time drew national attention to the conditions in the Textile Mill of the South, conditions which saw laborers working for long hours in overheated rooms, including children. However, the management’s strict control of the workers and infiltration of the strikers led to the demise of the strike. The strike ended after one year but not without union leaders from the North coming to Atlanta to document the strike in detail, which has given historians the resources to tell the story of the 1914-1915 strike at Atlanta’s Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills.
[1] Gary Fink, 36.
[2] Gary Fink, 66.
[3] Clifford M. Kuhn, 215.