It's Labor Day weekend, a time to remember the crucial role labor unions played in America and to mourn those who gave their lives so others might have an opportunity for working men and women everywhere.
The history of the struggle of the working American is very real in Anderson County, the home of the bloody and notorious Chiquola Mill Massacre of 1934.
In an era where cotton mills controlled all aspects of a person’s life, many families had been lured from farms with the promise of good wages and security. Instead were soon met with the philosophy of: “keep a man hungry and he’ll work.”
The mills owned workers homes, the community churches and, essentially the towns in which they resided. Many of the mills paid workers in company script (for use at company stores where prices were higher). Child labor was common, with kids as young as six working long hours six days a week for $2 in wages, often working with machinery that was dangerous to those of any age.
Many mill owners also treated the adult workers with paternalism, ruling with an iron hand.
As the son of someone raised on an Anderson County mill hill, the human resilience was evident even among such difficult circumstance. It is clear that those neighborhoods also found a strong sense of community. With almost everyone in the same conditions, living in mill houses with parents working for low wages, they were close-knit, extended family. There are many stories of the goodness of neighbors and the enduring friendships they made in these places.
“We didn’t realize we were poor, it was just how everyone we knew lived,” said one friend who grew up in a mill village during this era. “I remember it (unions) was talked about some.” But it was not part of conversations in public. I do remember how tired my parents were most of the time.”
But the 1930s, changes occurred as mill owners sought to increase their profits during times of depression and lower prices. The paternalistic image fostered by the companies gave way to more “modern” industrial relations. The owners and managers began to stress technology and performance over a sense of family, which meant even longer hours with no additional money for the work.
These changes, along with a national push by workers across America to unite for better working conditions and wages, let to the fateful event at Chiquola Mill.
On Labor Day morning 1934, workers at the Chiquola Mill in Honea Path marched around the building, waving American flags and singing “We Shall Not Be Moved” and “Solidarity Forever.”
But the mill prepared for the marchers in advance, with strikebreakers taking their places around the mill, inside and out. Some carried clubs and rifles. A WWI machine gun was manned on the roof of the mill. Police Chief Paige and several patrolmen stood in front of the building with guns as well.
Inside the mill, some members of management manned rifles at the windows, rifles at least on supervisor would later use to kill.
On Sept. 6, 200 mill workers were joined by another 150 workers from Belton to picket the Chiquola Mill. Despite the later propaganda of the mill owners, almost all of those participating in the march were local.
At noon, a group of non-union workers attempted to enter the mill and were blocked by the picket line. Strikebreakers threw sticks down to the non-union workers.
According to testimony from Chief Paige, this caused “a scuffle” between those picketing and the strikebreakers. At this point, Local Magistrate Dan Beacham gave the order to fire, and intense firing began from the mill (thank God, the machine gun jammed, or the deaths could have easily topped 100). The strikers immediately began to flee, but the shooting continued.
Coroner J.R. McCoy found that all seven workers killed had been shot in the back by the strikebreakers. One, Claude Cannon, had to be shot five times (including when he was already on his hands and knees) before he finally succumbed to the bullets.
In 1985, I interviewed a man who participated in the strike. He was 17 at the time, and remembered marching when he heard the first gunshots. He watched the man in front of him, a neighbor, fall and assumed he had just stumbled. Then he saw the man was lying face down and bleeding from his back.
“I looked up at the mill and saw the supervisor shooting at us with a rifle from his office window, and I just took off.”
At the inquest summoned by the coroner, 11 strikebreakers were charged with murder, but local magistrate Beacham made sure all were acquitted. When two eyewitnesses testified that he was the one who had given the order to fire, Beacham had them arrested and charged with perjury. Dozens of workers were fired and evicted from their homes for participating in the strike or voicing support for the union.
The ugliness continued. Honea Path's churches, which were subsidized by the mill owners, refused to allow any funerals for the slain workers to be held on their grounds.
On Sept. 9 the United Textile Workers organized a funeral on an open field outside town, attracting a crowd of more than 10,000, who were addressed by George L. Googe from the AFL and John Peel from the UTW.
Mill owners and some local elites made threats and stoked fears of retaliation to prevent any discussion of events. They also spread a rumor that the strikers themselves had fired the first shot, a rumor that was still in circulation well into the 1990s.
As mill superintendents continued to dominate to mayorship other positions of power and authority, unionization in Honea Path stalled.
South Carolina Gov. Ibra Charles Blackwood issued a proclamation against union organizers and sympathizers in South Carolina, and the Chiquola Mill reopened four days later, protected by soldiers armed with machine guns, who remained on site for a month, effectively leading to most of the strikers returning to work without an additional bloodshed.
George Stoney’s excellent documentary on the event, “Uprising of ’34,” features the events of Chiquola Mill Massacre. It is a heart-wrenching film, with interviews with some who were part of the strike, as well as the families of those who lost loved ones that day.
The film highlights the fact that the community was hesitant to talk about the evens for decades after the massacre.
But the documentary did spark conversations in Honea Path that led to the dedication of a small stone marker for the fallen workers was erected in nearby Dogwood Park.
The documentary also prompted Frank Beacham, grandson of Dan Beacham, to begin an investigation of the events.
But so far so public commemorations of the event have been organized. Perhaps an event could be set for Labor Day 2023.
Today in Anderson County, thousands of workers are represented by labor unions, but many businesses still threaten to fire or otherwise punish those who promote unions. But even the spectre of unions has led many businesses to offer better benefits.
So today is a day to both celebrate the progress and remember those who paid for it with their lives and the lives of their families for the decades that followed.
For a full list of benefits labor unions brought to all American workers, visit here.
Tuesday, September 6, 2022 at 6:28AM 
