In Gastonia

No shop, no office door was opened one morning last week in Gastonia, N. C. Grim-faced, sullen men lounged about silent streets. They were waiting for the funeral of Chief of Police Orville F. Aderholt, murdered in a gun fight with textile strikers.

Last month (TIME, May 13) 1,700 Loray mill strikers reduced their demands, hoped to be taken back to work. Their offer was refused. Strikebreakers ran the mills. Downhearted, the strikers returned to their headquarters on the edge of town, chewed over their idleness in savage disappointment.

Last week a band of them, cursing "Scabs" started for the mill. Police intervened, turned them back to camp. Inside, a fight between two strikers brought the police. The strikers' guard opened fire on the law. Chief Aderholt, three policemen and Joseph Harrison, a union organizer, were shot in the fracas.

Chief Aderholt died the next day. Harrison and 58 others were arrested, some charged with murder. Thus ended the twelfth week of one of the first strikes in the "New" South.*

* The Loray mill strike should not be confused with another and larger strike of 5,000 workers at the Bemberg and Glantzoff mills in Elizabethton, Tenn., which has been settled (TIME, June 3).