Industrialization came later to the South than to the North, and the first generation of southern mill workers were transplanted farmers with no tradition of labor unions. Life in the mill village made organized labor difficult because the mill owner controlled nearly every aspect of workers’ lives, like the patriarch of a great family. Before the First World War, workers most often protested by quitting and moving, since labor shortages let entire families relocate and find work easily. During the war, rising demand for textiles brought prosperity, and owners offered good hours, bonuses, and raises to attract workers. After the war, demand dropped, owners cut pay, laid off workers, and required those who remained to do more work for equal or less pay, leaving many angry and dissatisfied. Some turned to labor unions, though unionizing could threaten their jobs in southern states with few worker protections and government officials who usually sided with influential mill owners. In mill communities, neighbors who had depended on one another for support and friendship were often divided over whether to join a union, with union members resenting those who kept working during strikes and nonmembers blaming union supporters for unrest. In 1929, mill employees in Gastonia, North Carolina, responded to layoffs by joining unions and striking, but over the spring and summer mill owners, aided by the state militia, evicted strikers from the mill villages. As confrontations between police and protesters intensified, Police Chief Orville Aderholt and union organizer Ella May Wiggins were killed in strike-related violence. When no one was brought to justice for Wiggins’s murder, union members lost hope and their efforts faded. Worker unrest continued into the 1930s, even as many placed hope in President Roosevelt’s emerging New Deal programs, but mill owners found ways to subvert measures such as the new minimum wage, and the Great Depression continued. Driven by these injustices, 500,000 textile employees across the country joined the General Strike of 1934, which lasted more than two months before the union relented. Many who had taken part soon became unemployed, and organized labor never again mounted such a large campaign in the South. For the next half-century, many mill workers said little about the events of 1929 and 1934, choosing silence in order to keep their jobs.