Lawrence Textile Striker's Children, 1912
The Lawrence Textile Strike was a strike of immigrant workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912 led by the Industrial Workers of the World. Prompted by one mill owner's decision to lower wages when a new law shortening the workweek went into effect in January, the strike spread rapidly through the town, growing to more than twenty thousand workers at nearly every mill within a week. The strikers' children were brought to New York and other cities, where they were cared for relieving their parents worry and need to provide for them. It was excellent publicity for the strikers. The strike, which lasted more than two months and which defied the assumptions of conservative trade unions within the American Federation of Labor that immigrant, largely female and ethnically divided workers could not be organized, was successful. Within a year, however, the union had largely collapsed and most of the gains achieved by the workers were lost. The Lawrence strike is often referred to as the "Bread and Roses" strike, or, "The Strike for Three Loaves".
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