We leave our homes in the morning,
          We kiss our children good bye,
          While we slave for the bosses
          Our children scream and cry.
  
                  "Mill Mother's Lament," By Ella May Wiggins. In Hard-Hitting Songs for
                  Hard-Hit People, Lomax, Guthrie, Seeger.

Ella May Wiggins was a song-writer and union organizer in Gastonia, North Carolina. She wrote several union sings. Her songs were so popular among striking textile workers in Gastonia that she was murdered by company thugs, Sept. 14, 1929. Her story was told by Margaret Larkin, an outstanding writer and folklorist who focused especially on labor material. The story first appeared in the Nation in 1929 and was later reprinted in Sing Out! (Vol. 5, No. 4).

        The two victims of the strike were the town's police chief,
        Orville Aderholt, who was killed under highly uncertain
        circumstances during a skirmish with strikers, and Ella May
        Wiggins, whose songs made her the "balladeer" of the Loray strike
        and whose death made her its "martyr." She was killed by gunfire
        while riding with fellow strikers to a union rally; she probably
        was murdered by vigilantes, but the exact cause of her death has
        never been determined.

        The killing of Wiggins became a national and even international
        cause celebre.

        From GASTONIA 1929; The Story of the Loray Mill Strike,
        By John A. Salmond, U. of North Carolina Press.
                                 [thanx Irwin Silber]

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