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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 18, 1912
Lawrence, Massachusetts – Fellow Worker Joe Ettor Urges Strikers to Fight On
From The Boston Sunday Globe of Jan 14, 1912:
Mayor Scanlon Addresses Big Mass Meeting.
———-LAWRENCE, Jan. 13-Tonight sees approximately 15,000 Mill operatives out of employment and grave apprehensions are felt that this number may be further increased Monday morning. Some of the mill agents and owners contemplate a general shut down. About 4000 of the men now out are strikers and the rest have been forced out by the closing of several mills.
Joseph J. Ettor of New York, a member of the Executive Board of the Industrial Workers of the World, who has assumed the position of leader of the strikers, in an impassioned speech at a mass meeting in the City Hall this afternoon, urged his audience of 1300 men and women to bend their efforts toward preventing any secession from their ranks…..
[He exhorted:]
Monday morning you have got to close the mills that you have caused to shut down tighter than you have them now.
It is up to you to encourage all to stand by the cause of the workers and get them not to go to work Monday morning. If you want to avoid blood shed remove the cause.
You cannot win by fighting with your fists against men armed or the Militia, but you have a weapon that they have not got.
You have the weapon of labor and with that you can beat them down if you stick together.
[Mayor Scanlon warned that the strikers must obey the law, to which Ettor replied:]
Must Be Firm, Exhorts Ettor.
Leader Ettor said that he, too, was for calmness and for anything that would prevent bloodshed, but, nevertheless, he must insist that whatever blood was spilled was not on the head of the working people, but on those who ground down the laboring class.
[He declared:]
While we wish to be cool and clam, at the same time we must be determined to win the contention for which you have struck. We are here to consider your interests alone. It’s up to you to win, and to do so you must hold together.
He was enthusiastically received and when he later addressed the Italians in their natural tongue there was further demonstration.
[Gilbert Smith, secretary-treasurer of Local 20, I. W. of W., presided at the meeting. Also speaking were Joseph Langiet (French), August Detollanaere (Belgian), Charles L. Webert (Polish), Michael Rusecky (of United Mine Workers, Pittston, Penn., Lithuanian).]
At the conclusion committees were chosen to represent the different nationalities involved in the strike in arranging a plan of action to be reported to a mass meeting in Franco-Belgian Hall tomorrow evening.
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