In 1912, Lawrence, Massachusetts was the “worsted capitol of the world,” with 32,000 workers employed in its dozen cotton and wool mills. The laborers came from twenty-seven ethnic groups and spoke two dozen different languages. Corporate profits were high but wages were at the starvation level; workers lived in crowded, unlit rooms; infant mortality was over seventeen percent; and disease, malnutrition, and death were widespread.
When the state legislature passed a law reducing the work week for women and children from fifty-six to fifty-four hours, employers cut wages and 23,000 workers struck. The workers called upon the Industrial Workers of the World to organize the strike; IWW leaders Joe Ettor, Arturo Giovannitti, Big Bill Haywood, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn arrived to take charge; and soon the New York Sun could report that, “Never before has a strike of such magnitude succeeded in uniting in one unflinching, unyielding, determined and united army so large and diverse a number of human beings.” Despite police intimidation, the presence of 2500 armed militia, mass arrests of pickets and even of emaciated child workers, jail sentences, fines, and physical assaults on strikers, labor held firm.
Three months later, employers capitulated and increased wages. But it would be the last victory for the IWW. In 1917, the Wilson Administration suppressed IWW publications, raided their offices, and tried the entire leadership under trumped up wartime espionage statutes. Bill Haywood—the legendary giant of the labor movement—was convicted, jumped bail, and ended up in the Soviet Union, where he died in 1928 as the IWW passed into legend.
Never stop fighting 'till the fight is done. Here endeth the lesson.