Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: The Prosecution of Ettor and Giovannitti, Leaders of the Lawrence Strike

Quote Giovannitti, The Walker, Rest My Brother —————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 2, 1912
The Plot Against Ettor and Giovannitti, Leaders of the Lawrence Strike

From the International Socialist Review of June 1912:

EDITORIAL

A Plot to Murder Wage-Workers. Our readers already know that Ettor and Giovannitti, the I. W. W. organizers who directed the Lawrence strike in its earlier stages, were thrown into jail on charge of conspiracy to murder. At the time this seemed merely a move to cripple the strike, and it was expected that when work was resumed at the mills they would be released. Now, however, it seems that a desperate effort will be made to pack a jury with tools of the mill owners and send our comrades to the electric chair. No one claims that they had any part in the actual killing of any one. The victim was a woman striker [Anna LoPizzo], and the shot was fired by a policeman, as is fully explained in the New York Call of May 10. The real question is whether the prisoners were inciting the strikers to violence, and on this point there is an overwhelming array of testimony in the negative. The REVIEW had a representative on the scene all through the closing days of the strike, and from his personal knowledge we can say that the capitalists and police were eager to have the strikers resort to force, and in many ways did all they could to provoke violence. The strike committee on the other hand realized that any resort to force would give the police and the soldiers the pretext they were looking for to slaughter hundreds of strikers. Consequently they maintained such discipline and restraint among the strikers that the pretext never came, and finally the strike was won. Now in revenge, the jackals of the mill owners are seeking to murder Ettor and Giovannitti. Their trial has been postponed to the August term of court. Money for their defense is urgently needed. Send it direct to William Yates, Treas., 430 Bay State Building, Lawrence, Mass.

[Emphasis added.]