USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Lawrence > Immigrant city: Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1845-1921 > Part 17
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At the same time the police brought in John Breen for planting the dynamite in Marad's shop. The case against Breen was so clear that the police court bound him over to the grand jury with- out a hearing. Since the dynamite had been wrapped in a copy of an undertaker's journal that was missing from only one funeral parlor, Breen's, and since Breen had alerted the police to the exact location of the dynamite, the judge was convinced of his implication. The court meanwhile acquitted the persons in whose homes the dynamite had been found.6
Lawrence, filled with rifles and rumors, reporters and re- formers, had already become the notorious city of 1912 and the strikers made it worse when they suddenly evacuated 300 of
6. The New York Times, Jan. 30, 1912; Boston Evening Transcript, Jan. 15, 19, Feb. 1, 1912; The Evening Tribune, Jan. 31, Feb. 1-3, 12, 21, 1912; Citizens' Association of Lawrence, Mass., Telling the Truth about the Ettor- Giovannitti Case ... (Lawrence, 1912), p. 1; Samuel Gompers, "The Lawrence Dynamite Conspiracy," American Federationist, XIX (1912), 815, 817.
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THE LAWRENCE STRIKE, 1912
their children in order, they said, to keep them from starving. Most of the children went to Socialists in New York City, but some ended up in Barre, Vermont, with the Socialist stone cutters. Since a gigantic parade greeted their arrival in New York, many felt that the Socialists were merely seeking publicity. Unwilling to let outsiders believe that it could not care for its children, the city government issued an order that no child could leave the city with- out its parents' written consent. When the strikers made two unsuccessful attempts to remove more of their children, the police would not let them go, and many women and children were jostled in the riots. Prejudiced sources, such as the I.W.W. publicist Justus Ebert and the Socialist Call, defended the exodus as the "humane" old French and Italian method of strike relief, but those on the other side accused the strikers of exploiting the children. The departure of the young people was certainly more than a relief measure, but the city was on shaky legal ground in stopping it.7
This was the final use of force during the strike. All events thereafter led to a settlement. On the day following the second railroad station riot most of the halls held meetings to discuss the rumor that the Italians were thinking of going back to work. When they failed to return, the mills began to offer concessions, and final- ly, two weeks later, the strike committee, backed by the cheers of a great outdoor mass meeting, voted to accept. Eight weeks after the first decision to go out, the strike was over. Within a few days almost everyone was back in the factories, with substantial wage increases all along the line. Workers formerly receiving $5.00 a week were to get more than $6.00; $8.00 operatives were raised to almost $8.75; and the higher paid craftsmen made sub- stantial gains. Throughout New England wages went up so fast that 1912 became a banner year for the textile workers.8 For these people Lawrence was a famous city, not a notorious one.
But while the operatives reveled in their new-found prosperity, bitterness continued in Lawrence during the remainder of the year.
7. The Evening Tribune, Feb. 10, 17, 22, 24, 1912; The New York Call, Feb. 13, 17, 19, Mar. 31, 1912; Ebert, Trial, p. 76; Strike at Lawrence, p. 368; Lorin F. Deland, "The Lawrence Strike: A Study," The Atlantic Monthly, CIX (1912), 696.
8. Robert A. Woods, "The Breadth and Depth of the Lawrence Outcome," The Survey, XXVIII (1912), 67-68.
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The articles appearing in magazines and newspapers throughout the country and the testimony at the federal strike hearings placed the city in an extremely poor light. An anarchist May Day parade and the debate over the disposition of the strike relief funds ruffled the feelings of many. Two trials also kept the strike sentiments alive. In the dynamite affair Breen got off with just a fine and was not at first required to testify, quite probably to protect President Wood. In a mysterious and poorly documented series of events contractor Ernest Pittman, who had built the Wood Mill, sup- posedly confessed to Attorney General Pelletier on August 19 while drunk that he had provided the dynamite for Wood and Breen. Apparently horrified by his indiscretion, he committed suicide the next day. Pelletier eventually had Wood and two others indicted for conspiracy to plant dynamite, but even Pittman's confession and a corroboration from Breen were not enough to convict Wood. Late in September the Caruso-Giovannitti-Ettor trial began in Salem with the state trying to prove that Joseph Caruso killed Annie LoPezzi while incited by the other two. Though the trial ended in an acquittal, it led to an unauthorized sympathy strike in Lawrence and kept feelings high.9
Lawrence responded to the strike on the basis of nationality. The old-time natives disapproved of it as the work of immigrants. The earlier immigrants, particularly the Irish, were also opposed to the strike. The Irish had no representative on the strike committee and none of their organizations paraded with the I.W.W. on Me- morial Day. There were many Irishmen among the city officials, most of whom were out of sympathy with the strikers. Judge Mahoney in the city court handed out stiff sentences to strikers; Assistant Marshal John J. Sullivan detained children at the rail- road station; School Committee member John Breen hid dynamite; Mayor Scanlon supposedly brought in Sherman Agency detectives, many of them Irish. Father O'Reilly's parish calendar condemned the I.W.W. for misleading the newly arrived foreigners. The scurrilous Leader even insisted that O'Reilly opposed the strike because most of the striking Italians were Protestant. According
9. Gompers, "Conspiracy," pp. 817-18; Ebert, Trial, pp. 92-93, 95, 102; The Leader, Oct. 20, 1912; The Evening Tribune, May 19, 21, 24, June 7, 1913; Trial Transcript; The Lawrence Sun, Sept. 28, 1912; Sunday Sun, Sept. 19, 1912; L'Era Nuova, Oct. 5, 1912.
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to the Leader the Protestant ministers begged the mill owners not to let O'Reilly settle the strike. While O'Reilly was humanely sympathetic toward the strikers, he took every opportunity to attack socialism and never actually sided with the workers.
In this attitude of wishing the strikers well, but disapproving of their radical leaders, the Irish and Father O'Reilly were con- sistent with the ideas they had held in the decade before 1912. Well established economically, politically, and socially, they had begun to think of themselves as natives and part of the process was to oppose the strike and the "foreigners" involved in it. They would not abandon the security that they had found in American- ism. While John Breen, the boss, had bitterly fought the corpora- tions in 1882, his son, John Breen the undertaker, helped them in the dynamite plot against the strikers. Father O'Reilly had shifted from attacking the mill owners in 1894 to supporting them pas- sively in 1912, and Mayor Scanlon, who had been with the owners during the strike, came out against tariff reduction when it was over. As the Irish made the transition, their nineteenth-century leaders began to die off. After the great boss John Breen, his work done, left in 1910, he was followed by Michael Carney and John Joyce, wealthy beverage dealers, Alderman John Tobin, and Katie O'Keefe. The story of Joyce, whom the Tribune called the "full typification of that great word-success," was similar to that of the others. Born in County Limerick in 1844, he was at work in the Washington Mill by the age of sixteen. After forming the Curran and Joyce soft drink company, he made a fortune and in his waning years retired to "Ledgemont," a large granite home in Andover. Such an immigrant could not support a strike.10
Those who arrived after the Civil War were almost as apathetic. A crowd of seven thousand strikers booed the French-Canadian priest who told them to go back to work and would have attacked
10. Trial Transcript, pp. 1081, 1609, 2172, 2194; The Lawrence Sun, May 31, 1912; Strike at Lawrence, p. 123; Ebert, Trial, pp. 39, 41, 54; The Evening Tribune, Jan. 12, Feb. 22, Mar. 4, 1912; The Leader, Mar. 10, 31, Nov. 24, 1912; Interview with Dr. Constant Calitri by Professor Edwin Fenton in 1951 through the kindness of Professor Fenton. Calitri said that few Irish struck and then only when absolutely necessary. Calitri was himself active in the strike. Augustinian Fathers, Lawrence, Mass., Our Parish Calendar, XIII (1908-9), No. 4, p. 7; XVI (1911-12), Nos. 10-12; XVII (1912-13), No. 6, p. 1; No. 7, p. 13; The Evening Tribune, April 8, 10, July 2, 1913, Jan. 27, 1917, Jan. 2, 1918.
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his house if Ettor had not intervened. Le Courrier said the "capitalists" could pay higher wages, but it otherwise did not sup- port the strikers. Ettor addressed a German mass meeting in its native tongue, and some of the Germans, principally the Socialists, left work, but not until half way through the strike did a majority of the Germans abandon their jobs. At the end only 400 enrolled in the I.W.W. Although the Anzeiger und Post was sympathetic with the "willing and peaceful" strikers, it strongly reproved the violence of the "rough criminal fellows." The operatives, it said, had struck because disgraceful conditions had exhausted their patience, but they had gone too far in exporting children. While the English had a branch of Local 20 and five representatives on the strike committee, including Socialist Thomas Holliday, they were far from unanimous in support of the strike. At the end of the first week many of them were still at work. Scabbing was common at the Arlington, where many Englishmen were employed and where the owners sent youths to break up an English strike meeting. Although the English, Canadians, and Germans did not oppose the strike as wholeheartedly as the Irish, they were far more against it than the later arrivals.11
The Italians, almost all of whom struck, were the backbone of the strike and provided part of its local leadership. Shortly be- fore the strike, Angelo Rocco formed the Italian I.W.W. local which called in Ettor. When Ettor set up the multi-national strike committee, Rocco and three other English-speaking Italians were the leaders of the Italian sub-committee. The police arrested Rocco a few weeks later when he appeared at the head of an Italian mob outside the Prospect Mill gates. Although he main- tained that he was only keeping the rioters from breaking down the doors of the factory, the police put him in jail. His arrest on the same day that Ettor and Giovannitti were jailed deprived the strikers, particularly the Italians, of much of their leadership.12
11. Le Courrier de Lawrence, Feb. 15, 22, 1912; Boston Evening Transcript, Jan. 31, 1912; Solidarity, Mar. 2, 1912. This reference to Solidarity and those that follow in this chapter are by the kindness of Professor Edwin Fenton. Anzeiger und Post, Jan. 20, Feb. 17, 24, Sept. 21, Oct. 5, 1912; Strike at Lawrence, p. 60; Trial Transcript, pp. 2259, 2280, 2338, 2352, 2382, 2395; Ebert, Trial, p. 41; Rocco Interview; The Evening Tribune, Jan. 19, Feb. 23, 1912.
12. Rocco Interview; Strike at Lawrence, p. 60; Trial Transcript, pp. 643, 2352, 2475; La Gazzetta del Massachusetts, Feb. 6, 1912.
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The Italians were often turbulent and unruly during the strike. They ran through the mills and destroyed machinery the first day. One was quoted as saying: "We are going to fight them for more bread; we are going to get a pair of shoes for our barefoot children; we are going to get another set of underwear for them." Two weeks later the Italians threw chunks of ice at the trolley cars. The entire trial of Ettor and Giovannitti was an attempt to prove that they inflamed the Italians and were responsible for the murder of Annie LoPezzi. A circular in Italian, supposedly the work of Ettor, ended with the charge: "Throw them [those urging the strikers to go back to work] down the stairs. Break their bones; and leave them a remembrance for life." According to Clark Carter, the city missionary, there was real terror in the city. "The Italians are afraid the Syrians are going to blow them up or stab them, and the threats are so numerous ... that many do not dare leave their houses. ... They have gone from house to house at midnight ... and said to them: 'Do not go to work, no work; work, kill you.'" When four Italians threatened to kill Paul Cassannanca if he went to work, he alerted the police, who followed him to an Italian meet- ing at Chabis Hall. He quickly walked over to the four, tipped his hat to the police, and watched the Italians marched off to jail. A Black Hand notice appeared one morning on the front door of the Loomfixers' Hall on Margin Street, but in the end the violence was mostly talk and murders did not occur.13
The Italian language was heard so often throughout Lawrence that observers came to believe that it was a purely Italian strike. Whether it was Ettor, Rocco, Giovannitti, or a lesser figure, some- one was always addressing a mob of shivering strikers in Italian. And when the strikers marched, they shifted from the "Marseillaise" to Italian songs in the Italian quarter.
In spite of the common language, however, the Italian business- men and priests split with the workers. Father Milanese supposed- ly received $50,000 from Wood for his efforts to get strikers back to work and for cautioning them against the use of force. This
13. Strike at Lawrence, pp. 37, 123, 372; Trial Transcript, pp. 1037, 1244, 1256, 1400-1, 2228, 2299, 2411, 2419, 2669; Calitri Interview; The Lawrence Sun, Jan. 15, 16, 18, 19, 1912; Solidarity, Jan. 15, 20, 1912; The Evening Tribune, Jan. 12, 1912. A Jewish worker also spoke of the Black Hand. Boston Evening Transcript, Jan. 20, 1912.
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may not be true, but Milanese was never enthusiastic about the strike even though he supported it for the first two weeks and assisted ably in relief work. Italian businessmen formed a board of trade and appointed the Italian banker Jeremiah Campopiano, who was their president, to confer with the mill owners. Campopi- ano was accused of encouraging the Boston Italian journal La Gaz- zetta to oppose the strike. Doctor Constant Calitri, an Italian radi- cal, said that the Italian storekeepers were against the strikers. But Fabrizio Pitocchelli, the well-known "Peter Kelley," who had been an Italian banker in Lawrence for fifteen years and who owned much real estate, provided the surety for Haywood's bond. In general, the Italian church and business groups were closer to the position of the Irish and French Canadians than to that of the Italian workers.14
Probably the second most important group of strikers were the Franco-Belgians. In the forefront of the radical labor move- ment ever since they arrived, they had provided several of the original Lawrence anarchists and "Wobblies." Cyrille Detol- lenaere, who was close to Ettor in the strike, was a member of the I.W.W. in 1905 and helped organize the Franco-Belgian branch of Local 20. As the strike got underway, the Franco-Belgians allowed the strikers to use their cooperative as headquarters. They were always among the most violent, even to the point of suggesting that all scabs be thrown in the river.15
In a lesser way the others contributed to the strike. The three Syrians on the strike committee were particularly important: Farris Marad, dyer, tailor, special policeman, and court interpreter; James Brox, grocer; and Doctor Hajjar. When interviewed years later, Marad denied that he was influential in the strike and said he had done little more than lead one of the parades. Even then he had turned the strikers away from the mills and avoided possible use of force. Brox had joined the I.W.W. in 1911 and during the strike invited Ettor to speak at one of the Syrian churches. Not
14. Strike at Lawrence, p. 311; Calitri Interview; The New York Call, Jan. 22, 1912; The Lawrence Sun, Jan. 18, Feb. 6, 1912; La Gazzetta del Massa- chusetts, Jan. 23, May 18, 1912; The Evening Tribune, Jan. 15, Mar. 1, 1912; Trial Transcript, pp. 2608, 2769-74.
15. Solidarity, July 22, 1911; Strike at Lawrence, p. 60; Rocco Interview; Ebert, Trial, p. 41; Trial Transcript, pp. 2209, 2264-66, 2466, 2475.
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only did the Poles contribute Chabis Hall, but they also took part in the early rioting and threw ice at the soldiers. Polish bakeries gave free bread to strikers and Polish barbers would not shave scabs. The Portuguese allowed their hall to be used for some disorderly meetings but were themselves extremely cautious. Al- though they decided to strike, they also agreed to stay away from the other strikers so as to avoid unnecessary involvement. One group of Lithuanians supported the I.W.W., while another, mostly Lithuanian Catholics, repudiated it because of its link with the Marxist International. Some Lithuanians took part in demonstra- tions and some lost their jobs. For them, as for all immigrants, the decision to strike was a hard one.16
In its own way each ethnic group adjusted to the strike. The Irish city official naturally behaved differently from the Italian operative or the Franco-Belgian anarchist. The division of the city's immigration history into three periods makes considerable sense when applied to the strike. Those who came first, the Irish, joined the natives in opposing the strike. Among those who arrived after 1865 the Germans were interested in principle but not in action, the Canadians not even interested in principle. The late-arriving Italians, Franco-Belgians, and Poles made the strike a success. Within some groups, especially the Italian and Lithua- nian, differences in occupation occasionally caused a schism, but otherwise the order of arrival, that is, the immigrant cycle, de- termined the way in which nationalities responded to the strike. Although all immigrants and their agencies, such as newspapers and churches, sympathized with the "just cause" of the strikers, most were reluctant to resort to violence. Only when moved to great rage did the immigrant worker become destructive and such
16. Though generally peaceful, the Syrians did help stop the machines at the Wood Mill. The Lawrence Sun, Jan. 13, 24, 1912; Strike at Lawrence, p. 301; Trial Transcript, p. 2228. Interview with Farris Marad, kindness of Professor Edwin Fenton. Trial Transcript, pp. 2195, 2590-91, 2598, 2601; Ebert, Trial, p. 46; The Evening Tribune, Jan. 17, 18, 23, 1912; The Lawrence Sun, Jan. 18, 1912. For Poles see Trial Transcript, pp. 2228, 2410, 2419, 2669; The Lawrence Sun, Jan. 17, Feb. 27, 1912; Strike at Lawrence, pp. 310-11; The Evening Tribune, Jan. 20, 1912. For Portuguese see Strike at Lawrence, p. 288; The Lawrence Sun, Jan. 18, 1912. For Lithuanians see The Evening Tribune, Jan. 18, Feb. 8, 23, 1912; The Lawrence Sun, Jan. 13, 24, 1912; Simas Suziedelis, The Story of St. Francis Lithuanian Parish, The Reverend A. Bruzas, tr. (Law- rence, 1953), pp. 86-90.
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incidents were not common. When the immigrants found them- selves caught in the strike, they reacted to it on the basis of their immigrant status.
As the natives were trapped in the strike, they responded by reviving their intolerance of immigrants. The strike of 1912 was one of the last in a long line of nativist episodes starting with the "Black House" riot of 1847. The new Citizens' Association, formed during the strike to defend the city's name, said that nine thousand of the strikers, including 90 per cent of the new members of the I.W.W., were first-generation Americans, most of them unable to speak English and all ignorant of the "real spirit of America." While the militiamen, many of them Harvard boys, sympathized with the strikers' demands, they were against all "foreigners." Fearing that the immigrants would destroy property, the city government would allow only English-speaking persons to use the streets near the mills. Much of the feeling between native and foreigner was actually between former immigrants like the Irish, who now thought of themselves as natives, and recent immigrants like the Italians. The year 1912 was, for these reasons, a high point in the intolerance of the city and marked the peak as well as the end of the decades of despair. The invasion of the southeastern Europeans had led to a revival of prejudice that had not been seen since the Know-Nothing days before the Civil War. The 1912 strike, therefore, demonstrated clearly the influence of the immigrant cycle on both labor disputes and ethnic friction and provided a climax to the narrative of the city's history.17
As a corollary, the strike also brought to a climax the various phases of the immigrant's search for security in Lawrence. During the strike the family was more than ever the focal point of immi- grant life. When immigrants went so far as to send their children away, it proved how much the strike meant to them. Some, un- able to stand the troubles of strike-torn Lawrence, escaped by returning to their ancestral homes and families across the sea. A crowd gathered early in February to see 126 Italians off for Boston, where they would take the Canopic to Italy. Because of the strong family ties between the old world and the new, European nations
17. Citizens' Association, A Reign of Terror in an American City (Lawrence, 1912); Walter Weyl, "The Strikers in Lawrence," The Outlook, C (1912), 310.
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evidenced great concern over the strike and the trial that followed. For those who stayed in Lawrence the family unit with several members working was more than ever the only means of finding economic security. The Labor Commissioner's report on the strike analyzed about fifty families whose wage earners worked in the mills. The median family with both parents working had a weekly income of $12.00 to $14.00. When only the father worked, the median was barely $8.00. Wherever there were high- income families, there were always four or five working. The family provided security during the strike as never before.18
As a result of the strike the immigrant found greater security also in the mills. Pay for Lawrence textile workers, which hit a zenith of $8.75 a week in 1909, went down somewhat in the slow years of 1910 and 1911. The Tribune's survey of the poorer-paid textile workers set the median between $5.00 and $6.00 a week at the start of the strike and the eighteen youthful witnesses at the Washington hearings and the Salem trial had a median in the same range. Ettor always maintained that the average pay in the mills was $6.00 a week. Actually the average was probably as high as $7.50 or $8.00 because the Tribune study did not include any of the higher-paid operatives, the witnesses were all young and re- ceiving low wages, and Ettor most certainly quoted a low figure; but it was still below the 1909 average, which was close to $9.00. The substantial increases after the strike then brought the pay back to the 1909 position and the immigrant was that much closer to the security for which he was looking.
There was still evidence that many immigrants had money. Campopiano said that each Italian leaving Lawrence in 1912 took with him savings of from $100 to $500, while the White Star Line agent said fifty of them alone took $12,000 out. The large sums raised for the relief funds and the Ettor trial indicated substantial savings. Immigrants were still poor, but enough had money to give the others hope.19
18. Two hundred left for Russian Poland. The Lawrence Sun, Feb. 10, 1912. One thousand Italians left early in February. The Evening Tribune, Feb. 5, 6, 1912. For French-Canadian departures see ibid. The Russians took such large quantities of clothing and furniture that it looked like a permanent de- parture. The Lawrence Sun, Feb. 10, 1912; Neill, Report, pp. 161-62; Boston Evening Transcript, Feb. 25, 1912.
19. Sunday Sun, June 5, 1910, Feb. 10, 1911; The Lawrence Sun, July 9,
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The increased strength of the Lawrence labor unions resulting from the strike gave the immigrant the means of fighting for an even better life. Membership rose from four thousand to seventeen thousand within a year. While many did not remain permanent members, Lawrence was never again the anti-union city it had once been. To counter the gains of the I.W.W., John Golden had come to Lawrence shortly after the start of the strike. Following Ettor's lead, he put an Italian named D'Allesandro to work organizing his fellow countrymen for the A.F.L. Since the I.W.W. suspected that Golden and the A.F.L. opposed the strike, feeling was bitter. By midsummer the A.F.L. had made some inroads into the I.W.W. and to exploit its gain set up the Union Label Monthly. By printing it in Italian and Polish, as well as English, the A.F.L. acknowledged the importance of ethnos in the city.20
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