strike

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The Great Bread and Roses Strike of 1912 — Part 4


By the first of February with the strike going into its fourth week, an unheard of length in the United States, the I.W.W. received between $1000 and $3000 a day for the strike fund. With it they were not only able to run soup kitchens and hand out much needed clothing, but they were also able to pay each family a weekly stipend depending upon the size of the family. The stipends ran from $2.00 a week for one person up to $5.50 a week for 10 people. It obviously was not entirely fair but it helped keep the strikers out for the duration.

When Joseph Ettor was arrested the Lawrence Evening Tribune on February 1 announced “Haywood Back in Charge.” In truth, Haywood had never been in charge nor did he care to be. His value was stumping for money, not running a strike. And what the public at large had yet to realize was that the committee of 56, that had been organized prior to the beginning of the strike, was in charge.

But February also brought a concession from the AFL when it announced it would start sending aid to the strikers. The AFL’s local office in Lawrence known as the CLU and manned by James Menzie had kept Golden apprised of the progress of the strike. Menzie was fully aware of the resolve of the strikers. He stated the AFL’s position at that time: “We are not antagonizing them [the IWW] but are desirous of bringing a settlement of the strike with benefit to the operatives.” From its national headquarters, AFL secretary Frank Morrison offered aid to the strikes, and invited all strikers to join the AFL. (“AF OF L Offers Aid to Strikers,” (Lawrence) Evening Tribune, February 5, 1912.) This signaled a major shift in the attitude of who could be a member. But it probably also showed concern among its leadership that the IWW was gaining too much strength. In truth, even though there were close to 30,000 unskilled laborers working in the mills, the IWW was never able to attract more than about 900 at any point during the strike. More, once the strike ended, most of those members left the IWW. But what this does show is just how misunderstood this pool of unskilled labor was. Those who should have been intimate with the working man, the union leaders, were actually rather clueless.

Menzie showed his misunderstanding of how the IWW was organized when in early February he characterized the strike as being unorganized. (“Strikers’ Committee Distrusts C.L.U.,” (Lawrence) Evening Tribune, February 5, 1912)

It became obvious to the Massachusetts legislature that the two unions were working at cross purposes and so it created a committee that would assist in bringing representatives of the AFL and IWW together in meetings with the mill owners. Heading the committee were Judge John F. Meany and future president of the United States, state senator Calvin Coolidge. But those meetings which did convene accomplished nothing. Each side had its heels dug into to its initial position. By this time, of the nearly 35,000 operatives employed by the textile mills, upwards to 22,000 were on strike on any given day.

By mid-February over 400 children had been moved from Lawrence to other cities, mainly New York. Mayor Scanlon pressured Col. Sweetzer to stop any further transport of children out of the city and on February 17, Col. Sweetzer ordered exactly that. On Feburary 23 a large group of women with children who were being sent to New York gathered at the railroad station. They were met by the Lawrence police department and a number of militia men. None were allowed to leave the city. Sweetzer stated that he felt the children were being kidnapped. (Frank P. Sibley, “Stops Exodus of Children,” Boston Globe, February 23, 1912.) Sweetzer declined to explain his actions. The women protested their being blocked from putting their children on the train and said they had the right to assemble. Those word were met with swift arrest. Several newspaper reports told of seeing women with babies in the arms in the city’s jail awaiting police court. They were each found guilty of loitering and fined $1. But each women refused to pay the fine and were then escorted off to jail. (James C. O’Leary, “U.S. Actions to be Urged,” Boston Sunday Globe, February 25, 1912.)

It was at this point one Alice Taft, wife of President William Howard Taft involved herself in the strike upon hearing the plight of the children and urged her husband to take action. And of February 26th, Pres. Taft, at the behest of Senator Miles Poindexter of Washington who had just visited Lawrence, got a resolution passed in the U.S. Senate that directed the Bureau of Labor open an investigation, which it did. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, a friend of industrialists, vehemently opposed the resolution saying it would be a case of the federal government interfering with a state’s internal affairs. And to back up his position he read a letter he had received from Golden of the AFL who contended the recent arrests were due to methods being used by the IWW. What he failed to mention was the fact that every IWW tactic had been totally within the law. That fact had not gone unnoticed in other corners of the United States. (AF OF L Threatens to Call General Strike,” Lawrence Daily American, February 29, 1912)

Soon after Congressional hearing were begun. What happened at those hearings brought to full view the actual conditions of the strikers and the reason they really had no choice but strike as they did.

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The Great Bread and Roses Strike of 1912 — Part 3


On January 25, 1912, a full 2 weeks after its beginning, the strike was showing no signs of ending. Members of the strike committee met with mill owners in an attempt to end the strike but failed. The strike committee represented operatives from every mill but the mill owners, in a statement to the Boston Globe (Boston Globe, January 26, 1912, p. 1) said, “. . . agents . . . have had . . . full authority to meet and discuss any grievances or complaints with the employes of the several mills.” This reflects the manner in which mill owners had historically dealt with union members from the AFL. Additionally, the AFL had formally stated it would not partake in the strike, that any grievances would be voiced through the Local 20 to the mill involved. And so you had a union backing the position taken by the mill owners. William Wood stated firmly that he absolutely would not deal with any general committee representing the strikers.

The tack being taken by the mill owners was a basic divide and conquer. They felt that by holding fast and demanding to only hear grievances from employees of their particular mill the resolve of the strikers would be weakened. They also claimed to not know what particular grievances the strikers had even though a list of five grievances had been submitted to them on January 16.

The strikers demands were:

  1. A 15% pay raise on the 54-hour pay basis
  2. That the premium system be abolished
  3. That all of the mills shut down for three days in order that a settlement could be reached
  4. That double time be paid for all overtime
  5. That no striker would be punished for walking out upon settlement

The “premium system,” to which they referred, was a complicated system of paying a worker according to his output. The idea was to hold a carrot out to improve productivity. But in fact, the workers had little control over their output. They were of course at the mercy of work available, the speed at which a machine ran, and how frequently a machine broke down. The latter was the worst because the various machines broke down with some regularity. The machine attendant who usually tended to 5 machines, saw his output drop while repairs were made. The company made no concessions for such instances.

During those two weeks almost daily meetings of the strike committee were held. All ethnicities were represented with Joseph Ettor leading the meeting. Ettor had assured Mayor Scanlon at the very beginning of the strike that he would implore his people to obey all police directives and to not cause trouble. Ettor reiterated this at the meetings. At two weeks there had been virtually no violence and certainly no strike. But the city of Lawrence felt like it was in a state of siege with not only a very visible police force, but three companies of Massachusetts militia stationed around the mills, rifles in hand. What the strikers did not know is that William Wood had hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to send men ostensibly to ferret out the possibility of vandalism. But their unstated mission was to cause trouble, rabble rouse, at any and all IWW gatherings. But try as they did, they failed.

If the strikers in Lawrence felt they were going it alone, they were correct. The Massachusetts state legislature, Gov. Foss, the Massachusetts militia, police forces and even the general public were aligned against them. Then, as now, people believed whatever they read in the newspapers. The Lawrence newspapers, the Lawrence Eagle and the Lawrence American, were decidedly against the strike. But what struck most hurtfully at their core was the fact that the most powerful priest in the state, Cardinal O’Connell, had commanded his priests to preach against the strike at mass. Considering at least 90% of the strikers were Roman Catholic, this hurt them greatly. The spiritual head of the Catholic Church in Lawrence, Father James T. O’Reilly, spoken vehemently against the strike.

But January 25 was important for another reason, removed from the strike negotiations going on in Boston. On that day 150 children we put aboard trains bound for Boston and then changed for trains going to New York. The IWW in New York City had managed to gain sympathy from some of the city’s elite who in turn offered to sponsor those 150 starving children coming to them.

The picture below shows noted suffragette Margaret Sanger in Lawrence with the departing children.

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Figure 1 Children preparing to leave Lawrence

It was well known and well documented that the strikers and their families were starving. But when the children from Lawrence arrived in New York City, those who were there to receive them were shocked at what they saw. Not only was the children’s malnourishment obvious, but their threadbare clothing shocked them. Their clothing was barely enough to cover their bodies but far short of what was necessary to fend off the cold weather. The New York Times covered the event and word of the condition of the children quickly became national news.

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Figure 2 Lawrence children paraded down a New York City street

Other cities quickly offered to taken in more children, most prominently Philadelphia. Public perception was quickly changed, the Lawrence strikers finally had national support.

Around 4:30 in the afternoon of January 29 a large crowd had gathered near the Everett Mill on the corner of Union and Common Streets. The strikers had gone there to try to convince people who were still working in the mills to join the strike. What happened next was detailed by a Boston Globe reporter:

“The soldiers clubbed their guns, and swung them hard, so hard that they smashed the butts of two rifles on strikers’ heads. The police clubbed right and left, and the crowd broke and ran.” It was at that point a single gunshot rang out, striking and killing Anna LoPizzo. Her assailant was unknown, to this day, but on January 31 Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti were arrested and charged with murder. This was in spite of the fact that the two men were over a mile away at the time at a union meeting. When the police realized the murder charge would not hold up they changed the charge to inciting to riot, again, even though the two were nowhere near. They were taken into custody and held in the Salem County jail until October when their trail was finally held and they were of course exonerated. But the police and mill owners had done what they had wanted all along, rid themselves of the ostensible strike leadership. The IWW, however, had planned for just such an occurrence which is one of the reasons the council of 56 was formed. They were the true leadership of the strike and even without Ettor present, they were more than capable of continuing the strike.

The mill owners stood firm, however, even as they felt control over the strike slipping from their grasp. The Lawrence strikers had been buttressed by small sympathy strikes at the Steven’s Mill and Brightwood Mill in North Andover and at the Marland Mill in Andover. Those mills were also textile in nature so they had an interest in a favorable strike outcome for the strikers.

By the first of February, even though the AFL was still against the strike, some of its Lawrence membership had joined the strike. The Lawrence strikers were also joined by the firemen. In this case fireman refers to the men whose job it was to keep the giant mill furnaces burning to power the mills.

And also by February, Bill Haywood in his travels around New England had gathered considerable monetary support which went directly into the strike fund and thence to feeding the strikers and getting them some coal for their stoves. But even more importantly, after the children had arrived in New York City, people from around the nation began to send money to the strike fund. The sums were not great but they were enough to keep the strikers fed.