“...Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for -- but we fight for roses, too!...
The slogan "Bread and Roses" originated in a speech given by Rose Schneiderman; a line in that speech ("The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too.") inspired the title of the poem Bread and Roses by James Oppenheim which was later set to music. It is commonly associated with a textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts during January–March 1912.
The workers in Lawrence lived in crowded and dangerous apartment buildings, often with many families sharing each apartment. Many families survived on bread, molasses, and beans; as one worker testified before the March 1912 congressional investigation of the Lawrence strike, "When we eat meat it seems like a holiday, especially for the children". The mortality rate for children was 50% by age six; 36 out of every 100 men and women who worked in the mill died by the time they reached 25. The mills and the community were divided along ethnic lines: most of the skilled jobs were held by native-born workers of English, Irish, and German descent, while Québécois, Italian, Slavic, Hungarian, Portuguese and Syrian immigrants made up most of the unskilled workforce.
A new Massachusetts law reduced the maximum number of hours of work per week for women and children from 56 to 54, effective January 1, 1912. On January 11, workers discovered what many of them had feared would happen: their employers had reduced their weekly pay to match the reduction in their hours. That difference in wages would amount to several loaves of bread for hard-pressed workers.
When Polish women weavers at Everett Cotton Mills realized that their employer had reduced their pay by 32¢ they stopped their looms and left the mill, shouting "short pay, short pay!" Workers at other mills joined the next day; within a week more than 20,000 workers were on strike.
A strike committee made up of two representatives from each ethnic group in the mills, which took responsibility for all major decisions. The committee, which arranged for its strike meetings to be translated into 25 different languages, put forward a set of demands; a 15% increase in wages for a 54-hour work week, double time for overtime work, and no discrimination against workers for their strike activity. The mainstram lbour union , the AFL-affilated, United Textile Workers (UTW), attempted to break the strike, claiming to speak for the workers of Lawrence and preferred to keep negotiations between each mill and its own operatives. The Industrial Worker of the World defended the grievences of all operatives from all the mills.The striking operatives ignored the UTW. Oliver Christian, national secretary of the Loomfixers Association, another AFL union, said he believed Massachusetts UTW president was a detriment to the cause of labor.
The IWW established an efficient system of relief committees, soup kitchens, and food distribution stations, while volunteer doctors provided medical care. The IWW raised funds on a nation-wide basis to provide weekly benefits for strikers and dramatized the strikers' needs by arranging for several hundred children to go to supporters' homes in New York City for the duration of the strike. When city authorities tried to prevent another 100 children from going to Philadelphia by sending police and the militia to the station to detain the children and arrest their parents, the police began clubbing both the children and their mothers while dragging them off to be taken away by truck; one pregnant mother miscarried.
American Woolen Company agreed to most of the strikers' demands on March 12, 1912. The rest of the manufacturers followed by the end of the month; other textile companies throughout New England, anxious to avoid a similar confrontation, followed suit. The strikers, however, lost nearly all of the gains they had won in the next few years. The mill owners proved more persistent, slowly chiseling away at the improvements in wages and working conditions, while firing union activists and installing labor spies to keep an eye on workers. A depression in the industry, followed by another speedup, led to further layoffs.
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for -- but we fight for roses, too!...
The slogan "Bread and Roses" originated in a speech given by Rose Schneiderman; a line in that speech ("The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too.") inspired the title of the poem Bread and Roses by James Oppenheim which was later set to music. It is commonly associated with a textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts during January–March 1912.
The workers in Lawrence lived in crowded and dangerous apartment buildings, often with many families sharing each apartment. Many families survived on bread, molasses, and beans; as one worker testified before the March 1912 congressional investigation of the Lawrence strike, "When we eat meat it seems like a holiday, especially for the children". The mortality rate for children was 50% by age six; 36 out of every 100 men and women who worked in the mill died by the time they reached 25. The mills and the community were divided along ethnic lines: most of the skilled jobs were held by native-born workers of English, Irish, and German descent, while Québécois, Italian, Slavic, Hungarian, Portuguese and Syrian immigrants made up most of the unskilled workforce.
A new Massachusetts law reduced the maximum number of hours of work per week for women and children from 56 to 54, effective January 1, 1912. On January 11, workers discovered what many of them had feared would happen: their employers had reduced their weekly pay to match the reduction in their hours. That difference in wages would amount to several loaves of bread for hard-pressed workers.
When Polish women weavers at Everett Cotton Mills realized that their employer had reduced their pay by 32¢ they stopped their looms and left the mill, shouting "short pay, short pay!" Workers at other mills joined the next day; within a week more than 20,000 workers were on strike.
A strike committee made up of two representatives from each ethnic group in the mills, which took responsibility for all major decisions. The committee, which arranged for its strike meetings to be translated into 25 different languages, put forward a set of demands; a 15% increase in wages for a 54-hour work week, double time for overtime work, and no discrimination against workers for their strike activity. The mainstram lbour union , the AFL-affilated, United Textile Workers (UTW), attempted to break the strike, claiming to speak for the workers of Lawrence and preferred to keep negotiations between each mill and its own operatives. The Industrial Worker of the World defended the grievences of all operatives from all the mills.The striking operatives ignored the UTW. Oliver Christian, national secretary of the Loomfixers Association, another AFL union, said he believed Massachusetts UTW president was a detriment to the cause of labor.
The IWW established an efficient system of relief committees, soup kitchens, and food distribution stations, while volunteer doctors provided medical care. The IWW raised funds on a nation-wide basis to provide weekly benefits for strikers and dramatized the strikers' needs by arranging for several hundred children to go to supporters' homes in New York City for the duration of the strike. When city authorities tried to prevent another 100 children from going to Philadelphia by sending police and the militia to the station to detain the children and arrest their parents, the police began clubbing both the children and their mothers while dragging them off to be taken away by truck; one pregnant mother miscarried.
American Woolen Company agreed to most of the strikers' demands on March 12, 1912. The rest of the manufacturers followed by the end of the month; other textile companies throughout New England, anxious to avoid a similar confrontation, followed suit. The strikers, however, lost nearly all of the gains they had won in the next few years. The mill owners proved more persistent, slowly chiseling away at the improvements in wages and working conditions, while firing union activists and installing labor spies to keep an eye on workers. A depression in the industry, followed by another speedup, led to further layoffs.
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