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Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 1, 1912
Lawrence, Massachusetts – Strikers’ Children Welcomed Home
From The Boston Sunday Globe of March 31, 1912:
BY FRANK P. SIBLEY.
LAWRENCE. March 30-Into the swarming hundreds round the railroad station the train moved slowly, its bell ringing constantly. With shouts the police forced open a passage across the platform from the station door to the train steps. Women fought to get through that line of police. And then the children passed between train and station and were loaded into the waiting wagons.
If one shut his eyes and disregarded the temperature and forgot that the cries which shivered the air into raucousness were of joy and not of rage, he could imagine that the scene of the morning of Feb. 24 was being enacted again.
But no man could shut his eyes, and nobody could mistake the shouts of delight and the laughter and the excited chatter in a dozen tongues, and nobody could mistake the wine of Spring in the air for the bitter cold of a Winter morning, and if he could, the half-dozen enthusiastic bands which were tooting joyously in the background would tell him that this was the return of the children of the textile operatives to the battle ground where their fathers [and mothers] have won.
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From The Pittsburg Press of March 31, 1912:
STRIKERS’ BABES RETURNED
SAFE TO MOTHERS’ ARMS
———-By United Press.
Lawrence, Mass., March 30.-There was great rejoicing in Lawrence tonight. Mothers and fathers with happy, tear-stained faces came back into their own when 240 “children of the strike,” who had been sent to New York, Philadelphia, Jersey City and points in New Hampshire until the great textile strike for living wages was over, were returned to their own firesides.
Twenty-five thousand people were gathered about North Station when the three special cars bearing the children pulled into the depot late this afternoon. Their faces beaming through their travel stain, the children stepped from the train into a perfect maelstrom of parental hugs and kisses. The first glad joyousness of the welcome over, members of the Industrial Workers of the World, under whose direction the children had been sent away, formed them in line along Essex st. With bands leading them and followed by an orderly crowd of 25,000, the children were marched to the Common, a short distance away, where “Big Bill” Haywood, Mrs. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Jones, William B. Trautmann and other Industrial Workers of the World leaders addressed the gathering.
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SOURCES & IMAGES
The Sunday Boston Globe
(Boston, Massachusetts)
-Mar 31, 1912, p1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/430916941/-
The Pittsburg Press
(Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
-March 31, 1912, p1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/143401356/
See also:
Mar 30, 1912, New York Call p1
-Lawrence Children Gathered in New York City, ready to return home.
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-new-york-call/1912/120330-newyorkcall-v05n090.pdf
Mar 31, 1912, New York Times
-Strikers’ Children Back in Lawrence
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/98846013/mar-31-1912-new-york-times-strikers/
Mar 31, 1912, Boston Globe
-Lawrence MA Monster Parade Welcomes Children
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/98845694/mar-31-1912-boston-globe-re-lawrence/
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/98845540/mar-31-1912-boston-globe-re-lawrence/
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/98845589/mar-31-1912-boston-globe-re-lawrence/
Search: New York, Lawrence Children, Mar 30-Apr 2, 1912
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/pages/results/?state=New+York&dateFilterType=range&date1=03%2F30%2F1912&date2=04%2F02%2F1912&language=&ortext=&andtext=lawrence+strike+children+return&phrasetext=&proxtext=&proxdistance=5&rows=20&searchType=advanced&sort=date
Search: Vermont, Lawrence Children, Mar 30-Apr 2, 1912
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/pages/results/?state=Vermont&dateFilterType=range&date1=03%2F30%2F1912&date2=04%2F01%2F1912&language=&ortext=&andtext=lawrence+children&phrasetext=&proxtext=&proxdistance=5&rows=20&searchType=advanced&sort=date
Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 26, 1912
Lawrence, Massachusetts – Mothers and Children Attacked by Militia
Tag: Lawrence Textile Strike Children’s Exodus 1912
https://weneverforget.org/tag/lawrence-textile-strike-childrens-exodus-1912/
Tag: Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912
https://weneverforget.org/tag/lawrence-textile-strike-of-1912/
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Lawrence Strike Song – People’s Music Network
-Home gathering at Lawrence MA, put together by Mary Todd
with special guest, Salvatore Celli, who, at age 4, was sent
to Barre VT during Children’s Exodus.