Today in Labor History March 12, 1912: The IWW won their Bread and Roses textile strike in Lawrence, MA. This was the first strike to use the moving picket line, implemented to avoid arrest for loitering. The workers came from 51 different nationalities and spoke 22 different languages. The mainstream unions, including the American Federation of Labor, all believed it was impossible to organize such a diverse workforce. However, the IWW organized workers by linguistic group and trained organizers who could speak each of the languages. Each language group got a delegate on the strike committee and had complete autonomy. Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn masterminded the strategy of sending hundreds of the strikers' hungry children to sympathetic families in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont, drawing widespread sympathy, especially after police violently stopped a further exodus. 3 workers were killed by police during the strike. Nearly 300 were arrested.
The 1911 verse, by Poet James Oppenheim, has been associated with the strike, particularly after Upton Sinclair made the connection in his 1915 labor anthology, “The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest”
As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
Today in Labor History February 24, 1912: The cops beat up women and children during the IWW-led Bread and Roses textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Three people died during the strike. Unknown numbers were injured. The police arrested nearly 300 workers during the two-and-a-half-month strike. The authorities framed and arrested IWW organizers Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti for murder.
Today in Labor History February 19, 1912: During the IWW Bread & Roses Strike in Lawrence, MA, 200 police attacked 100 women picketers, knocking them to the ground and beating them. As a result, several pregnant women lost their babies.
Today in Labor History January 11, 1912: The Bread and Roses textile strike began in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The IWW organized and led this strike of 32,000 women and children after management slashed wages. A group of Polish women walked out after receiving their pay and realizing they’d been cheated. Others soon joined them. The strike lasted 10 weeks. Many sent their children to live with family, friends or supporters during the strike to protect them from the hunger and violence. Members of the Modern School took in many of these kids. During the strike, the cops kept arresting the women for loitering. So, they began to march as they protested. This was the first known use of the moving picket line. The strike was led by IWW organizers Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Big Bill Haywood, Joe Etter and Arturo Giovannitti. Hundreds were arrested, including Etter and Giovannitti, who were charged with murder. 3 workers died.
Today in Labor History September 30, 1912: The Lawrence, Massachusetts “Bread and Roses” textile strike was in full swing. On this date, 12,000 textile workers walked out of mills to protest the arrests of two leaders of the strike. Police clubbed strikers and arrested many, while the bosses fired 1,500. IWW co-founder Big Bill Haywood threatened another general strike to get the workers reinstated. Strike leaders Arturo Giovannitti and Joe Ettor were eventually acquitted 58 days later. During the strike, IWW organizers Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn came up with the plan of sending hundreds of the strikers' hungry children to live with sympathetic families in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont, a move that drew widespread sympathy for the strikers. Nearly 300 workers were arrested during the strike; three were killed. After the strike was over, IWW co-founder and socialist candidate for president, Eugene Debs, said "The Victory at Lawrence was the most decisive and far-reaching ever won by organized labor."
Several novels have been written against the backdrop of this famous strike: The Cry of the Street (1913), by Mabel Farnum; Fighting for Bread and Roses (2005), by Lynn A. Coleman; Bread and Roses, Too (2006), by Katherine Paterson