Vol. 76/No. 16 April 23, 2012
Below is an excerpt from American Labor Struggles: 1877-1934 by Samuel Yellen, one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for April. It tells the story of 10 important labor battles, including the Lawrence, Mass., textile strike of 1912. Led by Industrial Workers of the World, 20,000 textile workers fought the “Woolen Trust” for 10 weeks, beating the bosses back and winning wage increases. Two leaders, Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti, were arrested and framed up on charges of being “accessories before the fact” to the shooting of one of the strikers, Anna Lo Pizzo, though neither of them were there when it happened. The trial took place in Salem. Subheadings are by the Militant. Copyright © 1936 by Samuel Yellen.
BY SAMUEL YELLEN
As soon as the strike was ended, the Lawrence workers and the I.W.W. took active steps to secure the freedom of the indicted men. An Ettor-Giovannitti Defense Committee of 12 was organized, with William D. Haywood as chairman. Legal, publicity, and financial departments were formed. The financial department collected and expended $60,000 during the course of the defense. The publicity department helped to form Ettor-Giovannitti Defense Conferences in New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and other large cities in the United States. Agitation, by means of protest parades, demonstrations, and meetings, mounted steadily. In New York a huge meeting was addressed on May 21 at Cooper Union by Morris Hillquit. At Boston there was a great demonstration, September 15, on the Common. The wave of agitation, as it swept higher each week, frightened the Lawrence and Massachusetts authorities. Charges of conspiracy to intimidate the workers in various textile mills were brought against Haywood, William Trautmann, William Yates, Ettor Giannini, Edmundo Rossoni, Guido Mazerreli, James P. Thompson, and Thomas Holliday, all of them, curiously enough, members of the Ettor-Giovannitti Defense Committee. Indictments were returned against them, and they were released on bail.
Workers call political strike
Toward the day of the opening of the trial, September 30, there began to spread among the textile workers a strong sentiment for a demonstration strike. Ettor and Giovannitti sent letters to a mass meeting at Lawrence on September 25, requesting that the idea be abandoned, since such a strike might prejudice public opinion and would certainly cost the workers much misery. Nevertheless, the workers were determined on this means of protest against what they regarded as a crying injustice, and Local 20 of the I.W.W. decided to support them. Accordingly, on September 30 about 15,000 textile workers at Lawrence quit work in a 24-hour demonstration strike. Never before had so revolutionary a strike—in fact, a political strike—occurred in the United States. Mayor Scanlon and the officials were both terrified and infuriated at the threat to the existing government. Police, detectives, and state police were called out. Strikers were brutally clubbed, 14 were arrested. Textile workers at Lowell, Lynn, Haverhill, and other Massachusetts cities voted to call a strike if the trial of Ettor and Giovannitti went wrong. In retaliation for the demonstration strike, the mill owners at Lawrence discharged and blacklisted between 1,500 and 2,000 of the more active strikers. When Haywood and the I.W.W. officials, however, threatened an exodus of textile workers from Lawrence, the blacklist was abandoned and the strikers were reëmployed without discrimination. …Each day crowds of workers gathered outside the courthouse to cheer the prisoners as they were conducted to and from the trial room. Protests poured in on the court from every part of the country. In Sweden and France a boycott of American woolen goods was begun. In Italy the Social Union announced the candidacy of Arturo Giovannitti to represent Carpi in the Chamber of Deputies, and the Corriere d’Italia called upon the Italian government to make representations to prevent the United States “from committing a repugnant injustice.” The demonstration strike had focused the attention of the world on Salem.
The prosecution, in the 58 days of trial, attempted to prove that Ettor and Giovannitti had incited the strikers, and hence Caruso, to violence and murder; but both the evidence and witnesses presented were easily discredited. … It was soon apparent that there was no evidence on which to convict.
‘Mighty army of working class’
Since the prosecution had often assailed their political and economic principles, Ettor and Giovannitti requested and received permission to deliver closing speeches to the jury. They made no attempt to conceal, euphemize, or soften their unalterable and fundamental opposition to the existing order of society. Giovannitti, indeed, declared:Let me tell you that the first strike that breaks again in this Commonwealth or any other place in America where the work and the help and the intelligence of Joseph J. Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti will be needed and necessary, there we shall go again, regardless of any fear and of any threat. We shall return again to our humble efforts, obscure, unknown, misunderstood soldiers of this mighty army of the working class of the world, which, out of the shadows and the darkness of the past, is striving towards the destined goal, which is the emancipation of human kind, which is the establishment of love and brotherhood and justice for every man and every woman on this earth.
On Tuesday morning, November 26, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. Ettor and Giovannitti, free once more after 10 months in jail, were cheered and embraced by crowds outside the courthouse. That afternoon they addressed a mass meeting at Lawrence, at which more than 10,000 workers hailed them and celebrated the completion of the Lawrence strike victory, the accomplishment of their display of solidarity.
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