By Chris Mahin
"We want bread – and roses!”
“Bayonets cannot weave cloth!”
“Better to starve fighting than to starve working!”
More than a century ago, thousands of men, women and
children shouted those slogans – in many different languages – in the bitter
cold of a Massachusetts winter.
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| strikers defy the militia |
On 12th
January 1912, thousands of workers walked out of the textile mills of Lawrence,
Massachusetts and began a strike that lasted until 24th March 1912.
At its height, the strike involved 23,000 workers.
Located in the
Merrimack River Valley, about 30 miles north of Boston, Lawrence was a city of
86,000 people in 1912, and a great textile centre. It outranked all other
cities in the production of woollen and worsted goods. The woollen and cotton
mills of the city employed over 40,000 workers – about one-half of Lawrence’s
population over the age of 14.
Most of the
Lawrence textile workers were unskilled. Within a one-mile radius of the mill
district there lived 25 different nationalities, speaking 50 languages. By
1912, Italians, Poles, Russians, Syrians and Lithuanians had replaced
native-born Americans and western Europeans as the predominant groups in the
mills. The largest single ethnic group in the city was Italian.
At the time of the
strike, 44.6 per cent of the textile workers in Lawrence were women. More than
10 per cent of the mill workers were under the age of 18.
Despite a heavy
tariff protecting the woollen industry, the wages and living standards of
textile workers had declined steadily since 1905. The introduction of a
two-loom system in the woollen industry and a corresponding speed-up in the
cotton industry led to lay-offs, unemployment and wage reductions. A federal
government report showed that for a week in late November 1911, some 22,000
textile employees, including foremen, supervisors and office workers, averaged
about $8.76 for a full week’s work. This wage was totally inadequate, despite
the fact that the average work week was 56 hours and 21.6 per cent of the
workers worked more hours than that.
To make things
worse, the cost of living was higher in Lawrence than in the rest of New
England. The city was also one of the most congested in the USA, with many
workers crowded into foul tenements.
The daily diet of
most of the mill workers consisted of bread, molasses and beans. Serving meat
with a meal was very rare, often reserved for holidays. The inevitable result
of all this was an unhealthy work force. Dr Elizabeth Shapleigh, a Lawrence
physician, wrote: “A considerable number of the boys and girls die within the
first two or three years after beginning work. … Thirty-six out of every 100 of
all the men and women who work in the mill die before or by the time they are
25.”
The immediate
cause of the strike was a cut in pay for all workers that took place after a
new state law went into effect on 1st January 1912. The law reduced
the number of hours that women and children could work from 56 to 54. The mill
owners simply sped up the machines to guarantee they would get the same amount
of production as before, and then cut the workers’ hours and wages.
On Thursday 11th
January 1912, some 1,750 weavers left their looms in the Everett Cotton Mill
when they learned that they had received less money. They were joined by 100
spinners from the Arlington Mills. When the Italian workers of the Washington
Mill left their jobs on the morning of Friday 12th January, the
Battle of Lawrence was in full swing. By Saturday night, 13th
January, some 20,000 textile workers had left their machines. By Monday night,
15th January, Lawrence had been transformed into an armed camp, with
the police and militia guarding the mills through the night.
The Lawrence
strike began as a spontaneous outburst but the strikers quickly realised that
they needed to organise themselves. At a mass meeting held on the afternoon of
the strike’s first day, they voted to send a telegram to Joe Ettor, a leader of
the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), asking him to come to Lawrence to
aid the strike. Ettor arrived in Lawrence the very next day, accompanied by his
friend Arturo Giovannitti, the editor of Il
Proletario and secretary of the Italian Socialist Federation.
Although only 27
years old, Joseph J (‘Smiling Joe’) Ettor was an experienced, militant leader
of the IWW. He had worked with Western miners and migrant workers, and with the
immigrant workers of the Eastern steel mills and shoe factories. Ettor could
speak English, Italian and Polish fluently, and could understand Hungarian and
Yiddish.
Under Ettor’s
leadership, the strikers set up a highly structured but democratic form of
organisation in which every nationality of worker involved in the strike was
represented. This structure played a decisive role in guaranteeing the strike’s
outcome. A general strike committee was organised, and a network of soup
kitchens and food distribution stations was set up. The strikers voted to
demand a 15 per cent increase in wages, a 54-hour week, double time for
overtime, and the abolition of the premium and bonus systems.
Despite the fact
that the city and state authorities imposed a virtual state of martial law on
Lawrence, the strikers remained undaunted. They pioneered innovative tactics,
such as moving picket lines (in which thousands of workers marched through the
mill district in an endless chain with signs or armbands reading “Don’t be a
scab!”); mass marches on sidewalks [pavements]; and sending thousands of people
to browse in stores without buying anything. They organised numerous parades to
keep their own spirits up and to keep their cause in the public eye.
The agents of the
mill owners struck back. When the police and militia tried to halt a parade of
about 1,000 strikers on 29th January, a bystander, Annie LoPezzo,
was shot dead. Despite the fact that neither Ettor nor Giovannitti had been
present at the demonstration, they were both arrested the next day. They were
charged with being accessories before the fact to the murder because they had
supposedly incited the “riot” that led to the shooting. That same day, an
18-year-old Syrian striker, John Ramy, was killed by a bayonet thrust into his
back as he attempted to flee from advancing soldiers.
In early February,
the strikers began sending their children out of the city to live temporarily
with strike supporters. The city authorities vowed to stop this practice, and
on 24th February, a group of mothers and their children were clubbed
and beaten at the train station by cops. This act horrified the country and
swung the general public over to the side of the strikers.
Concerned that the growing outrage over the conditions
in Lawrence might lead to public support for lowering the wool tariff, the mill
owners began to look for a way to end the strike. First the largest employer,
the American Woolen Company, came to an agreement. Then the others followed.
The workers won most of their demands. By 24th March 1912, the
strike was officially declared over and the general strike committee disbanded.
It was a tremendous victory – but not the end of the battle.
On 30th
September 1912, the murder trial of Ettor and Giovannitti began; it lasted 58
days. The defendants were kept in metal cages in the courtroom whilst the trial
was in session. The prosecution accused Ettor and Giovannitti of inciting the
strikers to violence and murder. Witnesses proved that the two were speaking to
a meeting of workers several miles from the place where Annie LoPezzo was shot.
Across the USA and the world, concerned people expressed outrage at the
prosecution’s attempt to punish two leaders for their ideas.
Before the end of
the trial, Ettor and Giovannitti asked for permission to address the court.
Ettor challenged the jurors, declaring that if they were going to sentence
Giovannitti and himself to death, the verdict should find them guilty of their
real offence – their beliefs.
He said: “What are
my social views? I may be wrong but I contend that all the wealth in this
country is the product of labour and that it belongs to labour. My views are
the same as Giovannitti’s. We will give all that there is in us that the
workers may organise and in due time emancipate themselves, that the mills and
workshops may become their property and for their benefit. If we are set at
liberty these shall be our views. If you believe that we should not go out, and
that view will place the responsibility full upon us, I ask you one favour,
that Ettor and Giovannitti because of their ideas became murderers, and that in
your verdict you will say plainly, we shall die for it. … I neither offer
apology nor ask for a favour. I ask for justice.”
Giovannitti made
an impassioned speech to the jury, the first time he had ever spoken publicly
in English. His eloquence drew tears from the most jaded reporters present.
On 25th
November, the jury found the defendants not guilty. Pandemonium broke loose in
the courtroom.
There is something
especially poignant about the Battle of Lawrence – and something especially
important about learning its lessons. The Lawrence textile strike took place at
a time when the mill owners lacked manoeuvring room because they had to
maintain public support for a high tariff on woollens. That was certainly a
factor in the workers’ victory. So was the fact that the textile workers
comprised such a large percentage of the population of Lawrence. But those
factors do not change the reality that the victory at Lawrence was won by the
bravery and intelligence of the workers themselves.
The victory at
Lawrence disproved the vicious lie being circulated at the time by the leaders
of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) that immigrant workers could not be
organised. It showed that immigrant workers and women workers would not only support strikes – if given the chance,
they would gladly lead them, and
lead them well. The strikers in Lawrence won their demands because they never
let themselves be divided on ethnic or gender lines, because they were militant
(and creative) in their tactics, and because they found a way to appeal to the
conscience of the general public.
One other feature
of the Battle of Lawrence made it especially significant. It’s summed up in the
famous slogan of the strike – “We want
bread – and roses!” The textile workers who braved the Massachusetts
winter in 1912 wanted more than a wage increase. They were inspired by a vision
of a new society, one where the workers themselves ruled. In this society,
every human being would have “bread” – a decent standard of living. They would
also have “roses” – the chance to learn, to have access to art, music and
culture; a society which would allow the flowering of everyone’s talents, the
full development of every human being.
On this
anniversary of the Lawrence textile strike, we should take courage from the
bravery of the strikers, learn from their clever tactics and dare to think as
far ahead as they did. The Lawrence strikers believed deeply in the idea
expressed so well in one of the verses in the labour song Solidarity Forever. That verse confidently proclaims: “We can
build a new world from the ashes of the old.” Despite all the misery we see in
the present, a new world is possible. The cynics of today are as wrong to deny
the possibility of qualitative change as the AFL leaders in 1912 were to deny
the possibility of organising immigrant workers. If all of us act with as much
foresight and courage as did those who fought so well in Lawrence in 1912, the
vision of those strikers can become reality, and we can win a world with both
bread and roses for everyone.
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