Strike!

by Mary Heaton Vorse, Dee Garrison (Introduction)

The most famous of bloody southern textile strikes that took place in the late 1920s occurred at the Loray Mill in Gastonia, North Carolina, where workers endured fifty-five-hour work weeks, the strechout, and pay so low that everyone in their families over sixteen normally was expected to enter the mill. Strike! is a vivid portrait of the mill workers' living and working conditions, the discomfort of the few southern liberals, the labor spies, the wavering morale of the strikers, the shootings, deaths, and trials, and the vigilant mobs.

The story is told by Mary Heaton Vorse, the leading labor reporter of the period, who had covered major strikes since 1912. This novel wast the first of six inspired by the Gastonia strike. Critics hailed it as the best.

Genres: Labor

264 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1991

About the author

Libertarian socialist, labor advocate, suffragist, feminist.

Her personal papers are available at the Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. www.reuther.wayne.edu

See also A Footnote to Folly: Reminiscences of Mary Heaton Vorse by Mary Heaton Vorse and Mary Heaton Vorse: The Life of an American Insurgent by Dee Garrison.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Heaton_Vorse
www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAvorse.htm
www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/vorse/index.html
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Photograph
Credit: Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.

Reviews

[Hanne]

A book you obviously need to read it in it's time, but it's good. Incredible violence against strikers in the 1930s US South, heart-breaking story. I read it in almost one sitting. Impressive book