Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2023/Fall/Section33/Abel Starnes

Biography

Abel Starnes a.k.a Jim Barnes

Starnes grew up poor living on a 25-acre farm in Lexington, South Carolina.  He was the oldest of six children and at the age of fourteen he quit school and began working.   The following year, Starnes witnessed his father murdered by his uncle.  Two years later, after his mother remarries, Starnes ran away from home to work for a man named Ben Malone.  At the age of nineteen, Starnes married a woman named Sallie Young and moved to North Carolina.  They had two children and their marriage lasted about eight years until Starnes decided to abandon her (presumed that he changed his name to Jim Barnes after).  Starnes returned to South Carolina and worked in the loom room.  It was there where he met his current wife Bessie Smith and they married in 1922. Starnes wished that he led a more honest life, the feelings of grief and regret were almost palpable nearing the end of his interview in 1939.  

Social Context

America’s dichotomy during the Great Depression: Isolationism vs. Intervention

The Minister of Munitions Winston Churchill meets female workers at Georgetown's filling works near Glasgow during a visit on 9 October 1918.

The Great Depression, like many hardships, tends to bring out the divisiveness in society.  The Great Depression had exposed the non-cohesiveness of an entire country in a myriad of ways.  One of the more notable social dichotomies lay in that of class¹.  The South, more specifically, the poor, uneducated working-class southern demographic had gained some notoriety with the slogan “a rich man’s war, poor man’s fight”, used to illuminate those who would pay a price that is all too high for entering a war that had no relevance to them. On the contrary, elitists who were enthusiastic about the ongoing preparedness movement in the United States, saw this as an opportunity to help increase our military defenses through the acquisition of allies.  The preparedness movement, facilitated by those in favor of intervening in foreign, propagandized “benefits” for enlisting drawing the attention of the very demographic that disagreed with its premises.  

Steadily declining job market/quality

The disastrously disturbing consequences of the Great Depression that swept the South were immense, especially in the workplace.  The Great Depression created an economic vacuum in the South, in the opinion of C. Vann Woodward, a "fatal attraction" for "low-wage, low- [value] -creating industries." All of these under-capitalized industries sought large supplies of cheap, unskilled - read anti union”. These industries, namely mill factories, had extremely unsafe and hazardous work environments leading to a substantial number of workplace accidents/injuries.  Reiterating the aforementioned from Woodward, the inadequate wages given couldn’t afford healthcare much less other basic life necessities.  The conditions in which mill factories were able to expose their employees to was made only possible because of their lack of union presence.

A lacking presence of labor unions? Why?

"Tube boy" in the mule room of the Richmond Spinning Mill in Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA.

Labor unions, a democratically organized organization created to safeguard the moral principles that existed in their work environments during the 1800’s. They flourished in many parts of America after their creation, but the South gained little to no traction in the establishment of successful labor unions.  They faced various opposition either internally  by means of their schismatic culture, or externally  with the industries themselves having deterrents in place to thwart their unionization.

Racism

Racism played a prominent role in the slow construction of labor unions in the South, but it was by no means limited there. It was still present in the North as stated in, Rethinking Why There Are So Few Unions in the South written by Bryant Simon “Across the country in a wide variety of places, big and small, white workers clung to the privileges of whiteness and struggled to keep people of color out of their trades, sections of the plant, and unions.”  The South as speculated by historians, “too poisoned by racism (or in the case of African-American workers to be wounded by racism) to build viable unions.”

Industry Intervention

Anti Chinese riot in Seattle, Washington February 1886 "The Collision"

Mill factories in the south thrived off of poor, working southerns and it was in their best interest to ensure that they could continue subjecting them to inhumane treatment/care.  They would take extremely violent and deceptive measures to counteract union organization.  Providing mill workers with on-site housing and security, only to use the security to keep out union organizers. “In 1934, textile manufacturers armed themselves with tear gas, machine guns, and surveillance planes”, evidence of the overwhelming oppression mill workers faced just to gain a bit of equity.

References

1. Friedman, Gerald. “The Political Economy of Early Southern Unionism: Race, Politics, and Labor in the South, 1880-1953.” The Journal of Economic History 60, no. 2 (2000): 384–413. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2566376
2. Whatley, Warren C. “Labor for the Picking: The New Deal in the South.” The Journal of Economic History 43, no. 4 (1983): 905–29. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2121055
3. Dawley, Alan, and Jeanette Keith. The American Historical Review 111, no. 5 (2006): 1539–40. https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.111.5.1539
4. Simon, Bryant. “Rethinking Why There Are So Few Unions in the South.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 81, no. 2 (1997): 465–84. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40583653
5. THE TWO WORKERS. (1869). Sharpe's London Magazine of Entertainment and Instruction for General Reading, 34, 188. Retrieved from http://libproxy.lib.unc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-periodicals/two-workers/docview/4806723/se-2