One such event is the Bread and Roses strike, also known as the Lawrence strike or the strike for three loaves. Bread and Roses is the name of the 10-week strike, whose motto was “we want bread and roses too”.
It happened in 1912 in the Lawrence mills, Massachusetts, of the American Woollen Company (AWC). Lawrence was home to many textile mills relying very heavily on immigrants' labour. They had thousands of workers of 28 different nationalities and speaking 45 different languages. An interesting fact was that 50% of the workers were women between the ages of 14 and 18 and very badly paid. Many of the young people who started working there would die within the first 2 to 3 weeks of work and 36 out of 100 would not even reach the age of 25! Most would get $9 a week (while Henry Ford started paying his workers an amazing $5-workday in 1914, the pioneer of the welfare capitalism), having had to pay $6 for their weekly accommodation. Outrageous exploitation!
It all started on 12th January 1912 when the AWC decided to reduce workers’ pay after a government law, imposing the reduction of working hours: from 56 to 54 hours per week. The reduction in pay was supposed to match the reduction in hours, which thus amounted to several loaves of bread. The Polish women were the first to stop work and start demonstrating, and soon the movement spread to other factories of AWC: 10,000 demonstrated in the first day alone, following an awesome 20,000-25,000 within the first week! Impressive numbers!
They then turned to the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, which welcomed all type of workers, without any distinction, contrary to the other union fed- eration. The Wobblies first sent Joseph Ettor, a 27-year-old Italian, who managed to organise a strike committee in 2 days, consisting of 50 workers. Their demands included a 15% increase in wages for a 54-hour work week, double time for overtime work, and no discrimination against workers for their strike activity.
However, he was soon after arrested and had to be replaced by Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. The most outstanding deed is a non-stop 24-hour chanting and singing picket line of 6,000 workers for the whole 10 weeks of the strike. They all wore armbands saying “don’t be a scab (a person working while others are on strike)” and would also sing outside scabs’ homes to prevent them from sleeping. They are also remembered for inventing the moving picket line. Another significant aspect is the aid they gathered around their struggle: they raised $1,000 per day, which allowed them to set up soup kitchens and food distribution stations, and to provide medical care for the strikers.
At the end of 4 weeks of strike, socialists and unionists from New York offered to receive 119 strikers’ children in their homes. Margaret Sanger, the American sex educator, nurse and birth control activist, who coined the phrase 'birth control' and also who helped in this process, stated that only 4 of these children had underwear, whereas the outwear of all of them were mere rags. Some of these children participated in a parade down New York’s 5th Avenue. This was the last drop for the authorities, who sought for their revenge. When a second group of children was about to leave to Philadelphia, the police intervened and the brutality and violence is said to be indescribable, not even sparing the children.
Nevertheless, the women put up a good fight! Testimonies of a district attorney stated that one policeman could be able to handle 10 men, but to handle a woman, let alone a raving mad mother, 10 policemen would be needed! Nonetheless, violence left its marks and people were murdered: a pregnant woman miscarried. Peter Carlson in his 1983 book Roughneck about Bill Haywood wrote:
“At the barricades, pickets and police began to push and shove each other. The police advanced, packing the retreating marchers so tight that they could no longer move, and then began clubbing. Some strikers fought back. A policeman received a stab wound. The police sergeant then ordered his men to draw their weap- ons and fire. Their shots killed a young Italian striker named Anna LoPizzo.”
Although this is a strike staged by immigrant, women played a highly significant role as portrayed in the words of a Lawrence's boss:
“the women activists were full of lots of cunning and also lots of bad temper. They're everywhere, and it's getting worse all the time”.
One of the stories tells of a policeman caught in a bridge by Italian women workers: they stripped him off his clothes and gun, club and badge, and threw him naked into the freezing river. Another speaks of a Syrian woman who wrapped herself in the American flag and stepped in the middle of the crowd demonstrating and the line of soldiers and dared them to shot. Of course, all this violence achieved only more sympathy and support for the cause, and every repressive move was useless.
Finally, on 12th March 1912 the bosses of the AWC gave in and agreed on pay rises up to 11%. An indirect result of this outstanding strike was that 438,000 workers got $15m in pay rises. Harry Fosdick put forth in the June issue of Outlook in 1912 that
“[w]ages have been raised, work has been resumed, the militia has gone, and the whirring looms suggest industrial peace; but behind all this the most revolutionary organization in the history of American industry is building up an army of volunteers.
The I.W.W. leaves behind as hopelessly passé, the methods of the American Federation of Labor.”
Let us close our eyes and listen to these lines, trying to imagine the sight of those thousands singing for a better life and for their rights. Because of them and many others, we are able today to have work protection, rights and a contract, to go on a strike and express our views, to disagree with our bosses, to get legal support… alas an endless list.
“It was the spirit of the workers that seemed dangerous. They were always marching and singing. They are always marching and singing. The tired, grey crowds ebbing and flowing perpetually into the mills had waked and opened their mouths to sing.
NB. This article has already been published in the author's personal blog.
Cláudia Martins
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