National Affairs: Secession from Secession

The textile industry's 1,250,000 workers remember peppery little Francis Joseph Gorman as the leader of the great U. S. textile strikes of 1934. Last week Mr. Gorman loudly reminded them that he is also the president of a well-nigh forgotten union: United Textile Workers of America.

Last year C. I. O. set up a Textile Workers Organizing Committee under President Sidney Hillman of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, and took over the U. T. W. administration, its almost empty treasury, its debts and its 80,000 members, but left the union in theoretical existence as a committee affiliate. Along with other U. T. W. officers who bolted A. F. of L., Francis Gorman signed the contract which supposedly validated all this, and himself joined the new committee's advisory council.

As T. W. O. C. grew to a claimed 400,000 members and signed up 850 textile plants, brusque and able Sidney Hillman gained in stature. He did not trouble to conceal Francis Gorman's descent into obscurity. Labor gossips soon reported that Mr. Gorman was fretting in his Washington corner. Last summer, he confirmed the gossip by suddenly quitting the council.

Trouble followed for T. W. O. C. in Mr. Gorman's home town of Providence, R. I. Eleven rebellious locals were expelled by T. W. O. C., which sued to take over their funds. To Sidney Hillman's surprise and discomfort, Superior Court Judge Charles A. Walsh held last month that the contract whereby U. T. W. officers signed away their union was invalid, because the members did not have a chance to vote on it.

Last week Mr. Gorman recalled that judgment, said it wiped out T. W. O. C. as a legal entity. He ordered "700 locals" of U. T. W. to follow his leadership—back to A. F. of L., for he and his local in Providence have rejoined William Green.

Sidney Hillman retorted that all but 2,000 members of the old U. T. W. had voted themselves and their locals into T. W. O. C. He went through the motions of firing Mr. Gorman from the advisory council. Four U. T. W. vice presidents called Francis Gorman a traitor, and Mr. Hillman scoffed: "Mr. Gorman's attempt is doomed to failure, because he has no organization and no following." Mr. Gorman promptly fired the vice presidents, thereby indicating that he now looks upon himself as the head of an independent union, distinct from both T. W. O. C. and C. I. O.