"Mill Mother's Lament"

Background: The 1929 Communist-led strike at the Loray Mill in Gastonia, North Carolina, captured national attention, in part because of the violence that accompanied it. These two documents illustrate very different appeals in support of the strikers. The first is a song, “Mill Mother’s Lament,” written by Ella May Wiggins, a twenty-nine-year-old millworker and mother of five who was killed by vigilantes during the strike. The second is a reporter’s description of a strikers’ prayer meeting.

We leave our home in the morning,
We kiss our children goodbye,
While we slave for the bosses,
Our children scream and cry.

And when we draw our money
Our grocery bills to pay,
Not a cent to spend for clothing,
Not a cent to lay away.

And on that very evening,
Our little son will say:
“I need some shoes, dear mother,
And so does sister May.”
How it grieves the heart of a mother
You every one must know.
But we can’t buy for our children,
Our wages are too low.

It is for our little children
That seem to us so dear,
But for us nor them, dear workers,
The bosses do not care.

But understand, all workers,
Our union they do fear,
Let’s stand together, workers,
And have a union here.

Source: Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, et al., Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (1987).