USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Lawrence > Immigrant city: Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1845-1921 > Part 18
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While labor was fighting internally, its leaders and its newspaper supporters were continuing the protests against the mill owners which had started far back in the nineteenth century. Many articles assumed that Wood had been systematically violating the contract labor law since the 1890's. One educated Italian said during the strike that he had been induced to come to America by Wood's posters, which showed a "well dressed, prosperous appearing work- man emerging from the mills with bundles of money in his hands and on the opposite corner a bank building ... with the workman entering to put away his savings." But as before evidence was lacking.
Other sources accused Wood of anti-labor tactics. They main- tained that he used Fathers Milanese and O'Reilly and Mayor Scanlon to break the strike, and it does appear that these men were lukewarm toward the strikers. The dynamite plot was an owners' scheme to destroy the strike and the Ettor trial an attempt to prove that immigrants were radicals. But the corporations did
1910. The studies appeared in The Evening Tribune, Jan. 18, 20, 1912. Trial Transcript, p. 2141; Strike at Lawrence, pp. 32, 150, 152, 155-59, 165, 168, 169, 173, 237, 241; Boston Evening Transcript, Jan. 18, Feb. 25, 1912.
20. Lawrence was first in the state in 1913 in average number of members per union. Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Forty-fourth Annual Report . . . 1913, Mass. Pub. Doc. 15, Part III, pp. 43, 341, 377; The Evening Tribune, Jan. 16, Feb. 9, Mar. 6, 9, 1912; Mary K. O'Sullivan, "The Labor War at Lawrence," The Survey, XXVIII (1912), 72-74; Sunday Sun, July 7, 1912; Union Label Monthly, Sept. 30, 1912.
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THE LAWRENCE STRIKE, 1912
not follow the old practice of refusing to rehire strike leaders.21
The strike showed dramatically the importance of immigrant organizations in the life of the city. The meetings held at Chabis Hall, at the Portuguese center, at the Franco-Belgian Cooperative, and beneath the Syrian Church demonstrated the part played by national groups. So did the relief work of the immigrant societies, the presence of the Syrian band at the head of a parade, and the contributions of the Franco-Belgian Cooperative. Local 20, which started the strike, divided itself along ethnic lines as did the strike and relief committees. No one was really on his own; all de- pended upon some group. As the strikers discussed their problems, French, German, Italian, Polish, Hebrew, and other languages were used. The outcome of the strike, just as the whole history of the city before it, depended upon ethnic considerations.
The radical leaders of the strike made many believe that the city was filled with un-American anarchists and Socialists. Be- fore the strike Lawrence had only a few Socialists and a handful of anarchists. There was one tiny anarchist cell, a Socialist Labor party with an Italian branch, a Socialist party with a German branch, and, of course, Local 20 of the I.W.W. with its Italian, Polish, and Franco-Belgian branches. That was all and during the strike the number of local radicals did not increase. One Italian anarchist, Ettore Giannini, was on the strike committee, and two others named Antonio Colombo and Walter Pollano pro- moted the strike with a newspaper called Il Purgante. Colombo ran the printing office where Ettor received his mail and next to which the police found the dynamite. The anarchists and Social- ists who were so prominent-Ettor, Haywood, Flynn, and Giovan- nitti-all were outsiders. Aside from the I.W.W. none of the local radical organizations had anything to do with the strike. Several of the Lawrence workers who testified at the Washington hearings and at the Salem trial were regarded as troublemakers in the mills, but none uttered any Socialist or anarchist propaganda
21. The Evening Tribune, Jan. 30, Feb. 5, Mar. 18-19, 1912; The Leader, Jan. 21, Feb. 4, Mar. 10, 31, 1912; Dumont Goodyear, "The Lawrence Textile Strike," The Independent, LXXII (1912), 299; Deland, "Strike," p. 698; "The Lawrence Strike: A Review," The Outlook, C (1912), 533; Anzeiger und Post, Jan. 27, 1912; Calitri Interview; Rocco Interview; Solidarity, Jan. 20, 1912; The Lawrence Sun, April 21, 1912. A few Italians were not rehired, but this was not the general rule.
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IMMIGRANT CITY
when they had the chance. They were simply miserably poor people who wanted a better life, and in a way they typified Lawrence-a city that sympathized with the strikers but would have little to do with violent radicalism. Lawrence immigrants in the strike of 1912 were just as interested in bettering their lot as they had been ever since 1845 and were just as moderate in going about it. They were good Americans, but the rest of the United States did not realize it.22
22. Trial Transcript, pp. 643, 2362; Rocco Interview; Il Proletario, Nov. 11, 25, 1906, Feb. 23, 1908; La Gazzetta del Massachusetts, Jan. 23, Feb. 3, 1912; Ebert, Trial, pp. 62-63; L'Era Nuova, Dec. 10, 1910, Sept. 9, 30, 1911, Sept. 21, 1912. The Circolo sold 227 raffle tickets in 1911. Boston Evening Transcript, Jan. 12, 1912.
CHAPTER XI
American City, 1912-1921
To prove to the world what Lawrence already knew, the citizens of the immigrant city took steps to demonstrate their Americanism. Their efforts set the tone for the entire decade fol- lowing the strike. To repudiate the city's notorious reputation the newly formed Citizens' Association published in 1912 a series of pamphlets. While one proclaimed: "Lawrence-Here She Stands: For God and Country!" a second wanted people to see "Lawrence As It Really Is, Not As Syndicalists, Anarchists, Social- ists, Suffragists, Pseudo Philanthropists and Muckraking Yellow Journalists Have Painted it."1
But in the meantime the anarchists were undermining their work. One group met on the "plains" to hear speeches defending Ettor and Giovannitti on September 14, 1912. On September 30 a massive parade in honor of Annie LoPezzi, led by the famous anarchist Carlo Tresca, drew anarchists from Haverhill and Boston to Lawrence. Fifty red and black flags intermixed with 3,000 umbrellas gave the rainy day procession a weird appearance. The banners carrying the slogan "No God, No Country" particularly aroused the immigrant city.2
Responding to the challenge, Father O'Reilly planned a tre- mendous "God and Country" parade to be held by the entire city on October 12, just twenty years after the Columbus Day parade he had organized in 1892. On this Columbus Day, 1912, O'Reilly led 32,000 marchers through the main streets with banners reading
1. Citizens' Association of Lawrence, Mass., Telling the Truth about the Ettor-Giovannitti Case . .. (Lawrence, 1912); Citizens' Association, Lawrence, Mass., Lawrence As It Really Is ... (Lawrence, 1912).
2. L'Era Nuova, Sept. 21, Oct. 5, 26, 1912; Sunday Sun, Sept. 29, 1912.
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IMMIGRANT CITY
"For God and Country." The vast numbers participating in this all-city affair represented and united its immigrant groups. Im- migrants who had come together in January to strike now joined to pledge their Americanism. The immigrant had been tested and was now demonstrating his loyalty. The Irish, who had been here the longest and were generally the most Americanized, led the parade. Le Courrier, representing the thoroughly Americanized French Canadians, called it a "grand and superb" performance that would show the rest of the country that Lawrence would "no longer tolerate parades of anarchists and manifestations of people without faith nor law. ... " The Saint Mary's Calendar, which spoke for Catholics of all nationalities, bitterly condemned the "No God, No Country" banners of the anarchist parade. The question posed by the strike and the parade was answered. Law- rence followed the leadership of the I.W.W. instead of the A.F.L., but at the same time it adhered to the moderation that all groups immigrant or native had always supported. The patriotism nur- tured in the nineteenth century burst forth full grown on Columbus Day, 1912.3
While the immigrant was pledging his devotion to America, efforts were being made to help him adjust to his new world. When the Men and Religion Forward movement made a survey of "Efforts to Americanize Immigrants," it found seven non- English-speaking Catholic churches, two synagogues, and seven immigrant Protestant churches already at work. The International Institute for Women was trying to speed the assimilation of immi- grant women through a variety of classes, home visits, and social affairs. Other agencies were promoting naturalization by staging elaborate ceremonies when citizenship was granted. Since the immigrant was already an American in spirit when he arrived in Lawrence, these efforts promised to be successful.
Lawrence became so well known for Americanization that its School Committee was asked to help publish a book called "The American Plan for Education in Citizenship," which soon achieved a national reputation. Its aim was to help the schools "keep the
3. The Evening Tribune, Centennial Edition, 1953, "For God and Country" Section; Le Courrier de Lawrence, Oct. 10, 17, 1912; Augustinian Fathers, Lawrence, Mass., Our Parish Calendar, XVII (1912), No. 7, p. 13; The Leader, Oct. 13, 1912.
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AMERICAN CITY, 1912-1921
republic safe" and to "permeate every course of study with loyalty to American ideals." History was to teach "love and loyalty for America," civics to inculcate "devotion to the Community," and literature to arouse enthusiasm for the things "which the American spirit holds dear." The principles of the plan were first, "sacrifice for country"; second, belief in America as "the land of opportuni- ty"; third, patriotism; fourth, faith in American democracy; fifth, obedience to law; and last, love of country. While the good American was tolerant of other "liberal" forms of government, "internationalism . . . [was to] supplement Americanism, not de- stroy it." It was fitting that an immigrant city, Lawrence, should have devised this forthright definition of Americanism. It was simply the way in which earlier immigrants told later ones how to be good Americans.4
The intense Americanization drive had an unfortunate counter- part in nativism. When a bill was proposed that all schools in the state teach English and that the State Board of Education control parochial schools, it aroused the Catholic clergy in Lawrence. So did the argument that the foreign schools had fomented the strike of 1912. Father O'Reilly took great pains to point out that Angelo Rocco was educated in the public schools and that the French Canadians, most of whom attended their own schools, had taken little part in the strike. The Guardians of Liberty, who had a secret handclasp and called themselves "Minute Men," began to issue anti-Catholic pamphlets such as The Menace and Speak Kindly of Roman Catholics. When the Knights of Columbus spoke out against the publications, the Chamber of Commerce, which was basically native, attacked the Knights for "their . .. malicious, unpatriotic, and un-American efforts ... to stir up religious strife or bigotry." Among the Lithuanians a split arose between the Protestant majority and the Catholics.5
In the decade after the strike immigration declined. By 1915 the percentage of foreign-born had suffered its first important re- duction, dropping from 48 per cent in 1910 to 46 per cent. By
4. The Evening Tribune, Mar. 2, 1912; John J. Mahoney and H. H. Chamber- lin, A Statement of Aims and Principles (National Security League, The Lawrence Plan for Education in Citizenship, No. 1) (New York, 1918).
5. The Evening Tribune, Oct. 24, 1913, April 21, 22, Nov. 6, 1914, Feb. 18, Mar. 5, 19, 1915, Aug. 5, 1916, Feb. 27, 1917, Dec. 24, 1918, Jan. 2, 1919.
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IMMIGRANT CITY
1920 it was only 42 per cent. The population barely increased during those ten years, a great change from the tremendous gains of the previous seven decades.6 Immigration societies, nonetheless, continued to dominate the city. A new French Catholic church, additional Jewish, Polish, and Italian schools, and a new hall for the Saint Michael Polish Society demonstrated the vigor of both old and new immigrants. The semi-centennials of the Hibernians and the Saint Jean de Baptiste Society entertained the city. The Gaelic League brought the Irish a taste of the old country and the visits of General Andranike from Armenia and Garibaldi's daughter from Italy renewed the attachments of the later immigrants. Many of the nationalities raised money during and after the war to relieve suffering in Europe. The Jews started a Zionist drive and staged organized protests against the Polish pogroms and the Ukrainian massacres. The Syrians petitioned the State Department for in- formation about their countrymen in Turkey.
The World War gave the immigrant further chances to prove his Americanism. First it touched off a series of flag-raisings similar to those about 1898. When recent arrivals flocked to vol- unteer for combat, they helped counteract the resentment felt be- cause non-citizens were not required to go to war. Four Liberty Loan drives, each for about $4 million, went "over the top." The $16 million, said the Tribune, was another "vindication of 1912." To collect the money the city fell back upon its only sure organiza- tional base, immigrant groups. The Italians, most criticized in 1912, were particularly generous and their mass meetings were the feature of every drive. As its heroes returned home each nation- ality held banquets in their honor and built memorials for the dead. The immigrants had proven that they were Americans by spending their money and their lives for their country.7
In its tolerant treatment of the German immigrants Lawrence attained its highest degree of Americanism. Although the city had enough Germans to be second in Massachusetts in number of German female aliens registered, the Tribune reported no attacks
6. Ibid., Mar. 17, 1917; United States Census Bureau, Fourteenth Census of the United States . .. 1920, III (Washington, 1922), 464. See Table I.
7. The Evening Tribune, Mar. 18, May 20, 1913, April 1, 1914, Feb. 4, 1916, Feb. 26, Mar. 27, June 16, Oct. 24, 29, 1917, Feb. 9, May 2, 18, Oct. 1, 1918, April 29, 1920, Feb. 26, 1921.
199
AMERICAN CITY, 1912-1921
and showed no prejudice itself. It did carry less German news, but this was partly because the German societies were less active during the war. Since they knew they had built up considerable respect in Lawrence, the Germans determined to retain it by being unobtrusive. They held one mass meeting in 1914 to raise relief money for Germany and to protest against the treatment of Ger- mans in the American press. But they took part in neither the great Columbus Day Peace Parade of 1915, the victory celebration of 1918, nor the Britain's Day parade of the same year. The German societies did not contribute much to the Liberty Loan drives except the third, when Albert A. Schaake was particularly active and a big German meeting helped make it a success. The Germans strengthened their position in 1918 by holding a rally at which the speakers blamed the war on the "damnable Junker regime" in the old country. Lawrence was so tolerant that a Turner convention met there in 1917, and the same year W. F. Biederwolf, an evangelist, and Fritz Kreisler performed before enthusiastic crowds.8
The League of Nations debate gave the Irish a unique op- portunity to demonstrate their loyalty and attack the public schools and the British at the same time. Father O'Reilly presided over a mass meeting that petitioned Wilson to fight for Irish self-determi- nation at the Versailles Conference. The Friends of Irish Freedom protested against a pro-League speaker in the White Fund series because they considered the League only a scheme to strengthen Britain. They then demanded that the Irish-dominated City Council condemn the League Covenant as a "menace to the peace of the United States." Under such "a pagan document" the United States "would become the subject colony of the world government framed by President Wilson." Since they believed that article ten would force the United States to fight against Ireland if it rose in rebellion, the Irish were naturally against it and the entire Covenant. In general they felt that the League would give Great Britain control over the United States. While sympathetic, the City Council voted merely to endorse the stand taken by Senators Lodge and Walsh, who were for the League but with reservations.
8. Ibid., Sept. 2, 1914, Mar. 20, July 31, Aug. 6, Oct. 11, 1915, Feb. 5, 17, Nov. 8, 1917, April 11, 24, May 2, 4, 18, Aug. 30, Oct. 19, Nov. 13, Dec. 7, 1918, Feb. 6, 1920.
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IMMIGRANT CITY
Still undaunted, the Friends then carried the fight to the public schools, which they said were submerged in a sea of British propaganda. According to their version the teachers favored Great Britain in telling the Evangeline story. In addition they used a current events magazine that was pro-League and hired a speaker who defended the British position in Ireland. Even worse were the pro-British books used in school. Thompson and Bigwood's Lest We Forget included poems by that "anti-Catholic bigot Rudyard Kipling" and called England more democratic than the United States. A. B. Hart's Short History of the United States said that the Navigation Acts had not oppressed the American colonies. The Friends protested also against the history program set up in the schools by the National Security League, an organiza- tion that they believed was supporting Great Britain. Although the school superintendent refuted the charges and showed where the Friends had taken words out of context, the Irish had clearly estab- lished their position of defending the United States against Great Britain.º
The desperate efforts of the Lawrence immigrants to demon- strate their Americanism received a temporary setback in the tex- tile strike of 1919. Started in the depths of the winter during a slack textile period as the direct result of an attempt to lower wages along with hours, led by confused radicals (called, variously, Communists, Socialists, and anarchists) most of whom were from outside Lawrence, opposed by the A.F.L. and the English-speaking workers, and carried on mainly by Russians and Italians, this strike was similar to its predecessor in 1912. When the American Woolen Company cut hours to forty-eight and reduced pay pro- portionately, Ime Kaplan, a twenty-five-year-old Russian, and Samuel Bramhall, another immigrant, led thousands of laborers away from their machines. Angelo Rocco was still in the forefront, this time as attorney for the strikers. The Irish-controlled city gov- ernment once again hampered the strike by arresting the leaders for evading the draft and disturbing the peace, and by refusing the workers permission to parade or even hold outdoor meetings. As before, workers and police clashed on the picket lines. Children again left for out-of-town care. Comparable to the discovery of
9. Ibid., Aug. 1, 1914, Dec. 13, 1918, Jan. 24, Feb. 2, April 17, July 15, 1920.
201
AMERICAN CITY, 1912-1921
dynamite in 1912 was the bomb explosion that destroyed part of a trolley-car track in 1919. Supporting the owners were more private detectives, and defending the workers were outside journals such as the New York Call. When it was over on May 22, 1919, the workers had won another victory, but one less decisive than in 1912.10
While the strike revived the belief that immigrants were un- American, it gave those who refused to participate the chance to show their own loyalty by condemning the strike leaders as Com- munists. In addition to Kaplan and Bramhall, A. J. Muste, a Russian-born clergyman, a Reverend Long, Anthony Caprao, Nathan Klineman, and Joseph Salerno provided leadership which many called "Bolshevik." After Mayor White announced that there would be no bolshevism in Lawrence, the Tribune supported him with an attack on intellectuals called "No Liberty in Bolshev- ism." When Samuel Bramhall would not guarantee the singing of the Star Spangled Banner at a proposed meeting in 1921, the City Council refused to grant him the use of the Common. Public denunciations of communism were frequent. Stirred up by these charges and moved by the red scare sweeping the country, the United States government stepped in to arrest most of the strike leaders as aliens liable for deportation. The immigration officials, however, could not find enough evidence to send them back to Europe.11
Even those who took part in the strike managed to recover some of the prestige that they lost in it. In January of 1921 the Italian textile workers made a statement blaming outsiders for the strike. They attacked Muste, Long, Bramhall, and the others for their radicalism and spoke out against all efforts to "de- Americanize" the workers. Earlier the Lithuanians had denied statements that they would leave America if they lost the strike. In stilted phrases they proclaimed their Americanism: ". .. the Catholic Lithuanians of Lawrence, both strikers and non-strikers, do love this great city of Lawrence and this glorious country of America. ... " Just as in the October 12 parade in 1912 the immi- grants of Lawrence were revealing their true devotion to the 10. Ibid., Jan. 14-June 9, 1919; The New York Times, Jan. 24-May 25, 1919. 11. The Evening Tribune, June 24, Oct. 1, Nov. 7, Dec. 10, 1919, Jan. 3, 7, 24, Feb. 2, 1920, April 18, 1921.
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IMMIGRANT CITY
United States. They would follow alien leaders for better condi- tions but would never adopt un-American views.12
The reaction of Lawrence to the immigration restriction laws of 1917 and 1921, laws to which the 1912 strike had contributed, demonstrated how Americanized the city had become. Unlike the early days when Lawrence was wildly concerned about immigration laws, the city paid little attention to the new measures. The Syrians and Italians complained that the literacy test of 1917 would keep many of their families split, but there was no other opposition. The quota system of 1921 meant the end of three- quarters of a century of unlimited immigration to Lawrence, but it went unnoticed. Since it was now an American city, Lawrence did not seem to care if free immigration were ended.13
As Lawrence completed its shift from an immigrant city to an American city, signs of the coming of the twenties-none related to immigration-were frequent. In 1915 the Lenox Motor Car Company set up a plant in the city and the complications of the automobile age followed. The difficulty of enforcing the Volstead Act made the post-war crime wave in Lawrence even worse. Late in 1920 the stock market quotations began to find a place on the front page of the Tribune and the frenzied career of Charles Ponzi touched many in Lawrence. Hints of the wild twenties came in a city ordinance that prohibited darkening dance halls, a custom new to once Puritan Lawrence and one that Father O'Reilly and Le Progrès must have deplored. With the national makeup of the United States and Lawrence frozen, with all ethnic groups well established, and with the Americanism of the newcomers generally accepted, it is time to leave the story of Lawrence. Billy Wood anticipated the end of an era by announcing in 1920 his plans for a million-dollar plant and model village in nearby Shawsheen. Never again was he primarily interested in Lawrence.
By 1921 the meaning of Lawrence was clear. The simple picture of a notorious, poverty-stricken, un-American city that the strike observers had broadcast to the world in 1912 was false. The true story of the city was the one the immigrants knew. For almost seven decades between 1845 and 1912 a gigantic cycle of
12. Ibid., Jan. 21, 1921, May 2, 1919.
13. Ibid., Jan. 9, 14, 1913, Jan. 22, 1915, April 23, 1921.
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AMERICAN CITY, 1912-1921
immigration had shaped the history of Lawrence by dividing it into three periods. The Irish in 1850 were replaced by the French Canadians in 1865 and the Italians in 1890, and each group became more like the natives as their decades in the city accumu- lated. The very natives who liked to consider themselves superior to the foreign-born were themselves a generation or two removed from immigrant status and behaved as they did not because they were native-born but because of their particular position in the immigrant cycle. The fact that Lawrence was completely the child of immigration made the impact of the immigrant cycle that much greater.
The Lawrence experience was similar to that in many American cities. Like all immigrant centers it was closely tied to the old countries and also to the other immigrant cities of America. The group instinct of each nationality, therefore, remained strong and Lawrence experienced the same movements that were going on in Europe and in the United States. Like many cities Lawrence en- joyed a half-urban, half-rural situation which made the shift from farm life in Europe and Canada easier than in a city such as Boston, but more difficult than in parts of the American West. This environment also made Lawrence less a city of tragedy than it might have been by easing the hardships of the periodic de- pressions. By proving that the immigrants in Lawrence were neither hopelessly poor nor un-American, the story of the immi- grant city suggests that immigrants all over the United States were better off and more easily assimilated than generations of writers would admit.
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