Bread and Roses Strike 1912

What would you do?

Lawrence Mills

• In 1912 Lawrence was one of the greatest textile centers in the world. The primary owner of the mills was the American Woolen Company with thirty-four factories Over 40,000 people, or approximately half of the population of Lawrence, were employed by the mills.

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Men, women, and children often worked fourteen hours a day, six days a week, in unhealthy and hazardous factory environments.

The workers in the Lawrence mills encountered unbearable and exploitative conditions.

The factory floors were brutally hot in summer and painfully cold in winter.

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Background

The machinery was dangerous and the constant pressure to speed up production increased the risk of accident and injury.

Most expensive city in America

• The cost of living in Lawrence was higher than elsewhere in New England. Wages were low, rents were high, and living conditions in Lawrence were crowded, unhealthy and often dangerous.

• Mortality rates for children were high and 33% of adults died before they reached age twenty-five.

• Under Massachusetts’s law, school was compulsory for children until age fourteen.

• Many children took full time jobs in the mills when they reached 14 years old and many poor parents lied about their children’s ages and sent them before they reached fourteen  years old.

Shorter work week for women

• On January 1, 1912, in response to the hazardous conditions in the mills, the Massachusetts Legislature enacted a law reducing the work week for women and children from 56 hours per week to 54 hours per week.

• At that time, half of the workers in the mills were women and children and families were financially dependent on these wages to survive. This decrease in hours resulted in a lower weekly take home wage for all women and children in the mills.

American Woolen Mills

• Upset with the pay cut, immigrant employees of the American Woolen Company Mills went out on strike on January 11, 1912.

• This is the Bread and Roses Strike of 1912

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20,000 workers strike the next day

• The first to strike were Polish women, soon other immigrant women joined the strike and within a week more than 20,000 workers were on strike.

Mayor Calls Militia

• Mill management and city and state officials responded to the strike with force. The Mayor ordered a company of the local militia to patrol the streets. The state militia broke up meetings and marches.

Children abroad

• The I.W.W. union raised funds to help to striking workers.

• The union also arranged for several hundred children of strikers to temporarily live sympathetic families in New York, Philadelphia and Barre, VT.

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Habeas Corpus?

• But officials for the city of Lawrence forbade children to leave the city and sent the police and militia to stop the children from leaving.

What are the consequences if you choose to go on strike?

• Unemployment• No wages• No money for rent• No money for food• Possibly homeless• Starve to death• Give up on the American dream-(illiterate and broke)• Mentally frustrated• Frustrations that could lead to abuse• Get sickly due to malnutrition and cold weather

What would you do?