Today, over at West and Clear sister site Fort Worthology, I showed the in-depth walkthrough of two historic building restorations I was able to tour. One was the restoration of the Sawyer Grocery buildings from 1909 and 1910 on South Main, being converted to apartments over ground-floor retail by local developer Eddie Vanston, while the other is Eddie’s next project, the Miller Manufacturing Company building of 1911. | Map of the Building’s Location

As it turns out, the Miller Manufacturing building has one heck of a wild event in its past, and it would make a grand Pantherphile post here on West and Clear as well. So, let’s dive right into the story of the Miller Manufacturing Company Labor Strike of 1922.

First, some background. Miller Manufacturing was formed in 1903 by Byron Miller, who served as president. Vice president, incidentally, was none other than W. C. Stripling, of the department store fame. Miller built a factory on this site at the time, but it was destroyed in the Great Southside Fire of 1909. Work began on this new structure on Bryan Avenue in 1910, and it was completed in 1911. The new building was built of nice, fire-resistant concrete.

Evidence suggests that Miller’s factory was the first overalls and pants factory in Fort Worth, and it was also the first to utilize union labor. Not long after the factory opened, though, anti-union sentiment began to grow in the United States. There were a variety of reasons, such as the radical nature of labor organizations like the International Workers of the World, and the strong desire to roll back the gains made by the unions during World War I and for general labor reform. The effects began to be felt in Fort Worth, as historian Susan Kline puts it in her historical documentation of the building:

In Texas, the movement began to take hold in 1919 when the Beaumont Retail Merchants’ Association declared that it would not sign any union contracts and would begin operating open shops. Other open shop associations followed including one in Fort Worth. At the time of the strike against the Miller Manufacturing Company, the nation was in the midst of a major railroad strike and locally, workers were striking against the packing plants at the Fort Worth Stockyards. Fort Worth business leaders and residents were likely weary of labor issues and perhaps less sympathetic to unions in general.

The Miller factory employed mostly women, usually 150 to 200 total. On June 15, 1922, after Miller had begun using nonunion workers in his other factory facilities, the workers at the main Bryan Avenue building here went on strike. The company’s president at the time was Byron’s brother Clarence R. Miller. Clarence had previously been active in the Garment Workers Union and his gradual employment of more and more non-union workers was seen as a betrayal.

The strike ground operations to a halt, and idled the factory for seven weeks. In an attempt to break the strike, Miller officials declared the facility an “open shop” on August 14th. An “open shop” declaration meant the company would not discriminate against a potential worker because he or she was, or was not, part of a union. In effect, it meant the company did not recognize the union’s muscle and dominance.

After the open shop declaration, things began to get more serious. I’ll let Susan describe the events in her words:

The union workers picketed the plant and within a few days after the open shop declaration they were alleged to have engaged in various forms of intimidation of the nonunion workers. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that fourteen women and three men kidnapped one of the nonunion workers from her home. The victim “was scratched about the face and arms, carried a few miles in the country and returned to town under the promise that she would resign her place and would also use her influence to obtain the consent of other open shop workers to resign.” Strikers allegedly also surrounded the car of a company official who was driving two workers home, called him names and threatened to kill him. On August 17, a striker was arrested at the factory and charged with disturbing the peace after attempting to assault a woman entering the plant. The striker and about a dozen of her compatriots denied any intention of using violence.

That same day it was reported that another worker was kidnapped on her way to work. Mrs. H. L. Hinckle claimed that she was taken by car out to the Grapevine road, stripped from the waist up, had her shoes taken off and cut to pieces and then was flogged and left bound with rope and wire by the side of the road. The assailants included a male drive and four women. A few days later, the newspaper printed a detailed account of the attack. The victim later recanted parts of her story, including the part about being stripped and left out in the country. Although she had been struck with a rope, the beating was not as severe as she originally stated. She claimed she exaggerated her story “‘so as to turn the whole world against the Garment Workers Union’” and to claim damages against the company.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported on August 18 that another woman worker was hidden in the interurban watch tower at Handley, about seven miles east of Fort Worth, in order to protect her from pursuing strikers. The woman was identified as living in Dallas and was said to be one of the best operators at the plant.

The strike dragged on into September. A similar strike at nearby Williamson-Dickie was resolved at around the same time when the company and the workers negotiated an agreement that recognized the union. The workers at Miller Manufacturing, though, did not have the same good fortune.

On September 30, C. R. Miller announced that the Fort Worth factory would be relocated to Paris, Texas. The company claimed that it could not secure protection for its open shop workers. Fort Worth remained a distribution center for the company but production of its overalls and other work clothes ceased in the city.

The building changed hands throughout the years, and has been vacant since 1995.

As detailed in my post at Fort Worthology, local developer Eddie Vanston will be commencing work on the Miller Manufacturing building once work at his current project, the Sawyer Grocery restoration, is complete. The Miller building here will be transformed into 15 industrial-style loft apartments - seven on the first floor, eight on the second floor. The building’s tough construction has kept it usable, and its wide-open spaces, exposed structural elements, and giant-sized windows make it an ideal candidate for a real hardcore loft conversion.

So, in the not too distant future, the Miller Manufacturing building will be reborn - not as a clothing factory, but as residences. Hopefully, the people who move in to the lofts there will call up this post, read the history of their new home, and think about what it must have been like on this stretch of Bryan Avenue during the summer of 1922.

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