Lawrence Textile Strike

United States 1912

Synopsis

The 1912 textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, was one of the most heroic struggles and resounding victories of the U.S. working class and one of the most successful efforts of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). A distinctive characteristic was the diversity of the workforce: a variety of immigrant groups rallied to the strike, women played as decisive a role as the men, and children (many of whom were textile workers) played a powerful role as well. The strike rocked the nation. It is sometimes known as the "Bread and Roses" strike, thus associated with the stirring socialist-feminist anthem of that name written by James Oppenheim. Although there is scholarly controversy over whether that song was inspired by the Lawrence strike, it is obvious that the spirit of the Lawrence strike was consistent with that of the song: "Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes; Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!" The strike's outcome posed fundamental questions for the U.S. labor movement.

Timeline

• 1891: French troops open fire on workers during a 1 May demonstration at Fourmies, where employees of the Sans Pareille factory are striking for an eight-hour workday. Nine people are killed—two of them children—and 60 more are injured.
• Russian Revolution of 1905 occurs. Following the "bloody Sunday" riots before the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg in January, revolution spreads throughout Russia, in some places spurred on by newly formed workers' councils, or soviets. Among the most memorable incidents of the revolt is the mutiny aboard the battleship Potemkin. Suppressed by the czar, the revolution brings an end to liberal reforms, and thus sets the stage for the larger revolution of 1917.
• 1908: An earthquake in southern Italy and Sicily kills some 150,000 people.
• 1910: Revolution breaks out in Mexico, and will continue for the next seven years.
• 1912: The First Balkan War, which results in the defeat of Turkey by the allied forces of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro, begins. A peace treaty the following year partitions the majority of remaining Turkish holdings in Europe between the victors.
• 1912: Titanic sinks on its maiden voyage, from Southampton to New York, on 14 April. More than 1,500 people are killed.
• 1912: New Mexico and Arizona are admitted to the Union as the forty-seventh and forty-eighth states, respectively—the last of the contiguous U.S. territories to achieve statehood.
• 1914: On 28 June in the town of Sarajevo, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinates Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand and wife Sophie. In the weeks that follow, Austria declares war on Serbia, and Germany on Russia and France, while Great Britain responds by declaring war on Germany. By the beginning of August, the lines are drawn, with the Allies (Great Britain, France, Russia, Belgium, Serbia, Montenegro, and Japan) against the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey).
• 1918: The Second Battle of the Marne in July and August is the last major conflict on the Western Front. In November, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates, bringing an end to the war.
• 1922: Inspired by the Bolsheviks' example of imposing revolution by means of a coup, Benito Mussolini leads his blackshirts in an October "March on Rome," and forms a new fascist government.

Event and Its Context

The textile mills of Lawrence attracted over the years a diverse, multiethnic labor force as waves of immigrant families were drawn into the area. By 1912 there was an impressive mixture of humanity working in the mills: 30,000 workers, composed of 25 ethnic groups speaking 45 languages. Working-class families constituted more than 60,000 inhabitants in an industrial city of about 80,000.

The average wage in the mills was notoriously low at 16 cents an hour, which—given periodic unemployment—yielded a yearly income of less than $500 in a period when it was estimated that an average family could not live on less than $900 a year. Consequently, a number of families had to have more than one family member, sometimes parents and children alike, working in the mills to earn enough money to make ends meet. Half of all children between the ages of 14 and 18 living in Lawrence worked in the mills. The average workweek was 60 hours, and conditions were such that "a considerable number of the boys and girls die within the first two or three years after beginning work," according to a knowledgeable local physician, who added: "Thirty-six out of every 100 of all men and women who work in the mill die before or by the time they are 25 years of age."

Unionization efforts in Lawrence had not succeeded in forging large organizations. Less than 2,500 workers in the Lawrence mills were union members. Most of them were distributed among 10 weak craft locals that represented more highly skilled workers including engineers and machinists, cotton and woolen yarn workers, loom-fixers, warp preparers, and mule-spinners. Only one of these craft unions—the 200-member Mule Spinners Union—had a national affiliation with the United Textile Workers of America in the American Federation of Labor (AFL). By this period, the dominant trend in the AFL involved a commitment to a "pure-and-simple" unionism that accepted the capitalist system and tended to dismiss efforts to organize unskilled workers (especially the new immigrants from areas outside of western Europe, such as the majority of Lawrence mill workers). One AFL official was quite explicit in his description of these workers as "an unassimilated and un-American element so large and so varied in its racial composition as to make it well nigh impossible to disseminate among these people the advantages of unionism."

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) had established a presence in Lawrence in 1906, building up IWW Local 20 as part of the National Industrial Union of Textile Workers with a base among Italian, French-Canadian, Belgian, and English-speaking workers. The Outlook, a conservative weekly, described the IWW viewpoint in a discussion of national IWW leader "Big Bill" Haywood: "Haywood does not want unions of weavers, unions of spinners, unions of loom-fixers, unions of wool-sorters, but he wants one comprehensive union of all textile workers, which in time will take over the textile factories, as the steel workers will take over the steel mills and the railway workers the railways." In his autobiography, the IWW leader proudly reproduced this description, which continued, "Haywood interprets the class conflict literally as a war which is always on, which becomes daily more bitter and uncompromising, which can end only with the conquest of capitalistic society by proletarians or wage workers, organized industry by industry."

Ironically, it was the implementation of a labor reform that sparked a massive uprising and general strike that closed the Lawrence mills. When that happened, only the IWW was in a position to provide leadership.

The Strike

In 1911 the Massachusetts state legislature passed a bill that was scheduled to go into effect on 1 January 1912. The bill stipulated that women and children under 18 years of age must not work more than 54 hours a week. In fact, 44.6 percent of the work force was female and 11.5 percent was younger than 18 years. The Lawrence mill owners decided to cut all their workers' hours to 54 per week. The employers ignored inquiries from the unions, including the IWW, regarding how this change would affect the employees' wages. Workers got their answer upon receipt of their pay envelopes.

"Short pay! Short pay!" came shouts in Polish as women workers walked off the job in one mill. Similar reactions spread among workers of other ethnic groups throughout many of the mills. Among the more numerous Italian workers, leaders arose who systematically moved to shut down all the mills by any means necessary and closed five mills before police intervened. On the following day, a young but seasoned IWW organizer named Joseph Ettor arrived to help forge this spontaneous mass uprising into the formidable working-class battalions that would be needed to confront the combined power of the employers, city government, police, and state militia. By the end of the first week, 14,000 workers were on strike.

Ettor emphasized to the workers that "you can hope for no success on any policy of violence," noting that "in the last analysis, all the blood spilled will be your blood," and that "violence necessarily means the loss of the strike." He added, "Remember, you are also armed … with your labor power, which you can withhold and stop production." He and his comrades repeatedly pointed out that "they cannot weave cloth with bayonets." Ettor emphasized the need for solidarity and that division among the ranks would ensure their failure. He stated, "Among workers there is only one nationality, one race, one creed. …Remember always that you are workers with interests against those of the mill-owners."

Ettor's effectiveness derived in part from the efforts of various activists from Lawrence and the New England area: IWW Local 20 president John Adamson, Angelo Rocco among the Italians, Louis Picavet and Joseph Bedard among the French Canadians, Cyrille De Tollenaere among the Franco-Belgians, Ed Reilly among the Irish, Samuel Lipson among the Jews, and William Yates and Thomas Holliday among the English. Given the importance of women in the strike, the roles played by such militant workers as Anna Welzenbach, Rose Cardullo, and Josephine Liss were crucial.

Of the 30,000 textile workers in Lawrence, the great majority joined the IWW-led strike. These included 7,000 Italians, 6,000 Germans, 5,000 French Canadians, a mix of 5,000 English-speakers (U.S.-born, as well as Irish, Scottish, English, etc.), 2,500 Poles, 2,000 Lithuanians, 1,100 Franco-Belgians, 1,000 Syrians, and smaller numbers of Portuguese, Russians, Jews, Turks, Greeks, Letts, and others.

The workers elected a 12-person strike committee to coordinate daily efforts. The strike committee reported to a 56-person (later 60-person) general strike committee that met every morning and that represented the major nationalities involved in the strike. Behind each committee was a substitute committee intended to prevent disruption of strike activities in case of inevitable arrests and possible casualties during the strike. Ultimate decision-making power resided in the mass meetings of all strikers—men, women, and children—held on Saturdays and Sundays to communicate information on latest developments, to consider and vote on proposals of the general strike committee, to hear inspiring speeches and the native music of the various ethnic groups, and to join in singing stirring labor songs.

The strikers decided on four basic demands: (1) a 15 percent wage increase, (2) adoption of the 54-hour workweek, (3) abolition of the premium and bonus systems (connected to work speed-ups) and double pay for overtime, and (4) no discrimination against strikers for strike activities.

Effective Organization, National Attention, Victory

Big Bill Haywood noted that "the strikers handled their own affairs. … It was a democracy." A variety of subcommittees managed various aspects of the strike. In addition to mobilizing strikers to maintain mass picket lines, often confronting the police and militia, strikers devoted considerable effort to winning more workers to the strike and discouraging scabs from continuing to work. The strikers also managed six stores and 11 soup kitchens. The union sent out 120 relief investigators to determine the workers' needs. A fund-raising committee labored to secure about $75,000 in contributions needed to meet the expenses of the strike and to ensure that each family received between $2 and $5.50 for food each week, with an additional $1.50 every two weeks for fuel and clothing. Two volunteer doctors provided free medical care. Legal defense was provided to the many strikers who were arrested in the course of the strike. The committees also worked on the all-important matter of publicity to present the workers' case to the larger public. Vital cultural activities drew on the creative energies and lifted the spirits of the workers with music for the mass meetings, the poetry of such soulful and militant organizers as Arturo Giovannitti, as well as colorful and buoyant parades with banners and flags and song after song.

When Ettor and Giovannitti were arrested on trumped-up charges, other IWW militants—Haywood, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, William Trautmann, and others—took their places. The hulking, battled-scarred Haywood seemed to symbolize the rugged spirit of the American West and embraced the ethnic diversity of Lawrence, insisting, "They cannot break our ranks as long as we retain our unity." Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a young and vibrant woman known as "labor's Joan of Arc," later recalled how the strikers rallied around the concept of solidarity, "a beautiful word in all the languages." In this multiethnic context, the call "workers unite" was an example of internationalism, Flynn noted. "It was also real Americanism—the first they had heard. 'One nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.' They hadn't found it here, but they were willingly fighting to create it."

A distinctive feature of the strike was the mass participation of working women. "We held special meetings for the women, at which Haywood and I spoke," Flynn noted. Rejecting "the old-world attitude of man as the 'lord and master,'" IWW organizers "resolutely set out to combat those notions. The women wanted to picket. They were strikers as well as wives and were valiant fighters."

The strike captured national attention thanks to its diversity and creative energy, its effectiveness and uncompromising militancy, and the fact that antistrike slanders, repression, and conspiracies on the part of Lawrence's "respectable" classes frequently backfired. Perhaps the most colossal blunder was a police assault on a demonstration by children. Working-class families in other cities and towns opened their homes to the working-class children of Lawrence for the duration of the strike. Reacting to the sympathetic publicity that this had created for the strikers, the authorities violently attacked and arrested a contingent of children who were en route to the train station on 24 February. Many witnesses, including journalists, were present at the debacle.

The resulting national scandal not only generated more sympathy for the strikers, but also generated a congressional investigation into the causes of the strike and the conditions of the workers, which further increased public sympathy for the strikers. Although the AFL did not rally to support the strike led by its radical competitor (in fact, the small local of the United Textile Workers denounced the strike and crossed the picket line), there was widespread labor support throughout the country and mounting political pressure on the mill owners to bargain with the strikers.

Pressure following "the children's affair" proved decisive. Negotiations began on 29 February, and within two weeks the parties forged an agreement that substantially raised wages and maintained the 54-hour week, with more modest increases for overtime work and a promise of no sanctions against strikers. The remarkable victory brought the strike to an end. The victory was "compounded" after a sustained defense campaign that involved a 24-hour sympathy strike when strike leaders Ettor and Giovannetti were found not guilty and released from jail on 24 November.

Aftermath and Legacy

The Lawrence strike was the outstanding victory of the IWW's history, and yet within a year its power among the workers had collapsed. Not all 1912 strikers were part of the IWW, but membership had swelled from less than 300 to 10,000 in that year—only to fall to 700 by 1913 and 400 by 1914. There were several factors at work. One key was the nature of the IWW itself. The article from the weekly Outlook, quoted proudly and extensively in "Big Bill" Haywood's book, described the basic IWW orientation this way: "Haywood places no trust in trade agreements [i.e., contracts between employer and employee], which, according to his theory, lead merely to social peace and 'put the workers to sleep.' Let the employer lock out his men when he pleases, and let the workmen strike when they please. … What he desires is not a treaty of industrial peace between two high contracting parties, but merely the creation of a proletarian impulse which will eventually revolutionize society."

Whereas most unions in this period, including the more radical of the AFL unions led by socialists, sought to reach and codify an understanding with the employers through contracts, the IWW chose a course of perpetual struggle. Yet, given the difficulty of mobilizing sufficient forces to sustain a victorious struggle, this approach increased its members' vulnerability. The union's enemies increased their efforts to undermine and dislodge the IWW in Lawrence after the 1912 victory. The absence of a contract, along with the IWW's uncompromising radicalism, made this easier.

A persistent barrage of anti-IWW propaganda with accusations of "un-Americanism" and "Godlessness" was not entirely ineffective, especially when accompanied by persistent efforts to pit ethnic groups against each other and to intimidate workers with petty and not-so-petty forms of repression and reprisal. Strong indications point to manipulation of the local labor market by employers so that during economic downturns Lawrence would be flooded by new immigrant waves, and those who had comprised the IWW's member base were forced to leave the area. Consequently, within two years none of the local 1912 strike leaders remained in any of the Lawrence mills.

Yet the legacy of Lawrence strike influenced workers in future strikes that rocked Lawrence in 1919 and the 1930s and in labor struggles elsewhere, especially as the CIO began to build mass industrial unions a quarter of a century later. "The strike had been a magnificent demonstration of solidarity," Haywood later reflected, "and of what solidarity can do for the workers."

Key Players

Ettor, Joseph (1885-1948): Born in Brooklyn and raised in San Francisco, Ettor worked on the railroad, in a lumber mill, in shipbuilding, and in cigarmaking before becoming a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1906. He was an experienced organizer and strike leader by the time he came to Lawrence in 1912. In 1915 he became assistant secretary and general organizer of the IWW but left the organization in 1916 over sharp disagreements with IWW leader William Haywood. After 1925 Ettor abandoned radical politics and became a farmer and wine-maker in California.

Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley (1890-1964): Born of radical Irish immigrants in Concord, New Hampshire, Flynn grew up in poverty in the South Bronx and joined the IWW in 1906. Her prominence in the organization ended in 1916 following differences with "Big Bill" Haywood, but she remained a member until 1928. She also helped to found the Workers Defense League and the American Civil Liberties Union and was an early supporter of the International Labor Defense. Sympathetic to the communist movement for many years, she formally joined the U.S. Communist Party in 1938 and was one of its leading members until her death.

Giovannetti, Arturo (1882-1959): An Italian-born writer and orator, Giovannetti had upper-class origins but worked as a coal miner, bookkeeper, and teacher. He was influenced variously by Catholic, Protestant, Marxist, and anarchist thought and edited the socialist weekly, Il Proletario, while leading the Italian Socialist Federation of North America. He followed Joseph Ettor in breaking with the IWW in 1916. In later years he was associated with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.

Haywood, William D. (1869-1928): Born in Salt Lake City, Haywood went to work in the copper mines at the age of 15, learning about industrial unionism and socialism from a member of the Knights of Labor. Becoming a member of the Western Federation of Miners in 1896, he became the union's secretary-treasurer in 1901. In 1905 he became a founder and the central leader of the IWW. Opposing U.S. entry into World War I, he was arrested under the Sedition Act. He sympathized with the Russian Revolution and fled to the Soviet Union in 1921, where he became part of the communist movement.

See also: American Federation of Labor; Industrial Workers of the World.

Bibliography

Books

Buhel, Mari Jo, Paul Buhle, and Dan Georgakas, eds. Encyclopedia of the American Left, 2nd Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Cahn, William. Lawrence 1912: The Bread and Roses Strike.New York: Pilgrim Press, 1980.

Cannon, James P. The First Ten Years of American Communism, Report of a Participant. New York: Lyle Stuart, 1962.

Dubofsky, Melvyn. We Shall Be All: A History of the IWW.New York: Quadrangle Books, 1973.

Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley. I Speak My Own Piece: Autobiography of "The Rebel Girl." New York: Masses and Mainstream, 1955.

Foner, Philip S. History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Volume IV: The Industrial Workers of the World, 1905-1917. New York: International Publishers, 1965.

Haywood, William D. Bill Haywood's Book: The Autobiography of "Big Bill" Haywood. New York: International Publishers, 1929.

Kornbluh, Joyce L. Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology.Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1988.

Thompson, Fred W., and Patrick Murfin. The I.W.W.: Its First Seventy Years, 1905-1975. Chicago: Industrial Workers of the World, 1976.

—Paul Le Blanc