Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: One Big Union Wins Great Victory at Lawrence, Massachusetts, Part II

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Quote Lawrence Strike Committee, Drunk Cup to Dregs, Bst Dly Glb Eve p5, Jan 17, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday April 4, 1912
Lawrence Textile Strikers Win Great Victory with I. W. W., Part II of IV

From the International Socialist Review of April 1912:

ONE BIG UNION WINS

By LESLIE H. MARCY and FREDERICK SUMNER BOYD

Lawrence General Strike Com, ISR p617, Apr 1912

On January 11, anticipating some difficulty on pay day, the Secretary of Local 20, I. W. W. wired to Joseph J. Ettor, member of the National Executive Board, who was then in New York City, to go to Lawrence. He left the next afternoon, and arrived on the night of January 12.

Plans were then laid for the conduct of the strike. A general strike committee was formed that met daily, each nationality on strike being represented on it by three delegates. In addition there were three representatives each from the perchers, menders and burlers, the warp dressers, Kunhardt’s mill, the Oswoco mill, the paper mill, the workers in which had struck in sympathy with the textile workers and presented similar demands, and from time to time other sections were represented that were gradually merged as occasion demanded. The general strike committee thus numbered 56 men and women, all of them mill workers.

The first work of the committee was to devise means for carrying on the fight and caring for the strikers. There were no funds when the strike was declared, but in a week or ten days money began to dribble in from surrounding New England towns, and as the strike continued contributions came in from every State in the Union, from all parts of Canada and even from England.

Lawrence Relief Station, ISR p618, Apr 1912

The money in the shape of strike pay would not have lasted a week, but this battle was conducted on a different basis from former fights. Each nationality opened relief stations and soup kitchens, and was responsible for the care of its own people. The Franco-Belgians had had a co-operative in operation long before the strike, and food purchases were made through its machinery. Money was paid over to the various national committees as it became necessary by the general finance committee, with Joseph Bedard as Financial Secretary. With this money the purchasing committee bought goods, and the national committees took their portion.

Meals were provided twice a day at the various stations for the strikers who needed them, and in this manner the Franco-Belgian station at the Mason street headquarters provided 1,850 meals twice daily, the Italians 3,500, the Syrians 1,200, Lithuanians 1,200, the Poles 1,000, and soon, the Germans took care of 150 families and several hundred single workers.

Lawrence Children w Bread, ISR p618, Apr 1912

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: One Big Union Wins Great Victory at Lawrence, Massachusetts, Part II”

Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: One Big Union Wins Great Victory at Lawrence, Massachusetts, Part I

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Quote Lawrence Strike Committee, Drunk Cup to Dregs, Bst Dly Glb Eve p5, Jan 17, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 3, 1912
Lawrence Textile Strikers Win Great Victory with I. W. W., Part I of IV

From the International Socialist Review of April 1912:

HdLn BBH n re Lawrence Victory, ISR p613, Apr 1912

THE greatest victory in American labor history has been won by the Industrial Workers of the World in Lawrence, Mass., in a pitched battle of nine weeks’ duration against the most powerful cotton and woolen corporations in the world.

For fifty years the great textile corporations had reigned in New England practically unchallenged, save when ten years ago Tom Powers of Providence, R. I.. led a fierce battle against the American Woolen Company.

During the nine weeks of the fight in Lawrence every barbarity known to modern civilization had been perpetrated by police, military, courts and detectives, the willing tools of the bosses. Pregnant women were clubbed and their children delivered prematurely. Children were beaten in the streets and jails. Men were shot and bayonetted, the jail cells were filled, three year sentences were imposed for comparatively trivial offences, and machine guns were brought into the city.

And despite the abrogation without a shadow of legality of every constitutional right, including those of free speech and free assemblage, and despite the provocation offered by the presence of the bosses tools, twenty-two thousand strikers preserved, under the leadership of the Industrial Workers of the World, a self possession and a self-restraint that was little short of marvelous. Not one overt act was committed by the strikers. Not one desperate deed of an infuriated individual was proved against a striker.

For the first time in America’s labor history it has been demonstrated that a bitterly-fought battle between capitalists and workers can he conducted without the workers resorting to any form of violence. If any triumph is to be claimed for the I. W. W. this is one of the foremost of many.

Soldiers v Lawrence Strikers, ISR p 614, Apr 1912

The strike took its rise in hunger and was fought against hunger in the first place, and against excessive exploitation in the second. Sixty years ago, when Lawrence was little more than a village, and the mills were few and small, the daughters of New England farmers came from the farm to the mill to earn pin money. But as the years passed and the mills grew larger and more powerful there came into the city around the mills a class of people who depended entirely upon the mill for a living. They were first English, Irish and Scotch.

Later Germans and French Canadians began to enter and take their place in the mills. and for years these were the only nationalities to be found. Because the labor market was comparatively restricted and the mill owners were greedy for profits they sent lying emissaries through Europe, particularly to Italy, telling of the wealth of America. These men scattered literature broadcast, and showed pictures of the pleasant homes to be gained in the new land. One picture in particular showed a mill worker leaving the mill and on the way to a bank opposite.

Thus the Italian workers were lured to New England, and after them came in quick succession representatives of almost every nationality in Europe and Asia Minor, until today among others there are Syrians, Armenians, Russians, Portugese, Poles, Greeks, Franco-Belgians, Lithuanians, Letts [Latvians], Jews, Turks and Bohemians.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: One Big Union Wins Great Victory at Lawrence, Massachusetts, Part I”

Hellraisers Journal: Children of Lawrence Textile Strikers Back in Arms of Parents, Welcomed Home with Monster Parade

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Quote Lawrence Children Home, Ptt Prs p2, Mar 31, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 1, 1912
Lawrence, Massachusetts – Strikers’ Children Welcomed Home

From The Boston Sunday Globe of March 31, 1912:

HdLn n Photo Lawrence Children Home Parade, Bst Glb p1, Mar 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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