Labor Day 2013 -Bread And Roses (1912) In Lawrence, Massachusetts
In 1912, a new state law went into effect reducing the work week of women
and children from 56 to 54 hours. But because so many women and children worked
in the mills, men’s hours were also reduced. When the first paychecks of the
year revealed a cut in pay, thousands of workers, already barely surviving on an
average pay of $8.76 a week, walked out of the mills, and the Great Strike had
begun.
The strike united workers from 51 different nationalities. Carried on
throughout a brutally cold winter, the strike lasted more than two months,
defying the assumptions of conservative trade unions within the American
Federation of Labor that immigrant, largely female and ethnically divided
workers could not be organized. In late January, when a bystander was killed
during a protest, I.W.W. organizers Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti were
arrested on charges of being accessories to the murder. I.W.W. leaders Bill
Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn came to Lawrence to run the strike. Together
they masterminded its signature move, sending hundreds of the strikers’ hungry
children to sympathetic families in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont. The move
drew widespread sympathy, especially after police stopped a further exodus,
leading to violence at the Lawrence train station.The IWW raised funds on a
nation-wide basis to provide weekly benefits for strikers and dramatized the
strikers’ needs by arranging for several hundred children to go to supporters’
homes in New York City for the duration of the strike. The union established an
efficient system of relief committees, soup kitchens, and food distribution
stations, while volunteer doctors provided medical care.
Congressional
hearings followed, resulting in exposure of shocking conditions in the Lawrence
mills and calls for investigation of the “wool trust.” Mill owners soon decided
to settle the strike, giving workers in Lawrence and throughout New England
raises of up to 20 percent.
The
Boston Industrial Workers of the world see this event as a critical part of our
history and fully support The Bread & Roses Heritage Committee. we call to
all workers to come out on labor day SEPTEMBER 2, 2013 to recognize,
commemorate, inform, and share the labor history and social justice legacy of
Lawrence’s 1912 Bread & Roses strike.
an
injury to one is an injury to all!
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