Former Superior Court Building (Brick building labelled 1861-1891)

On January 1st, the Massachusetts Government enforced a law that cut mill workers' hours in their work week from 56 to 54 hours for women and children. Many of the workers in the textile industry and woolen mills of Lawrence (and nationwide) were women and young girls. The workers didn’t realize right away, but that time cut also came with a pay cut.

The first workers to walk out did so on January 11th. They were Polish women in Lawrence at the Everett Mill. On January 12th, workers in the Washington Mill of the American Woolen Company also found out that their wages had been cut and walked out. The strike began to gain steam and many other workers began to get involved. The strikes consisted of (primarily) immigrant workers in Lawrence, Mass., led by the union Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) known as the Wobblies. Joseph James “Smiling Joe” Ettor, an Italian-American trade union organizer, had been working with the IWW and organizing in Lawrence for some time before the strikes. Joseph and Arturo M. Giovennitti, of the Italian Socialist Federation of the Socialist Party of America, quickly assumed leadership of the strike by forming a strike committee of 56 people. These 56 were made up of 4 representatives from each of the 14 nationalities of workers. The strike meetings were translated into 25 different languages. These strikes were monumental for several reasons, one of which being that the trade unions at the time were very conservative and did not believe that a group of immigrants, largely female, and ethnically diverse workers could organize themselves. The committee put forth a set of demands to the mills – a 15% increase in wages for a 54-hour work week, double pay for overtime work, and no discrimination against workers for their strike activity. The city of Lawrence responded to the strike by ringing the city's alarm bell for the first time in its history. The mayor also ordered a company of the local militia to patrol the streets. A crowd of picketers gathered in front of the mills and the mill owners decided to respond by spraying them with fire hoses. The picketers, who were peaceful up to this point, responded by throwing ice and snow balls into the mill windows, breaking many of them. 24 workers were sentenced to a year in jail for throwing the ice.

On January 29th, a 34-year-old striker, Anna LoPizzo, was shot in the chest and killed during a protest. The police claimed that the shot was fired by the protestors, and the protestors thought they saw the police do it. IWW organizers Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti were framed on charges of accessory to murder, and arrested. Authorities declared martial law, banning all meetings of three or more, and called out 22 more militia companies to patrol the streets. Harvard students were given exemptions from their final exams if they agreed to go and try to break up the strike. Both Ettor and Giovannitti had alibies for the murder; they were about 3 miles away from the protest where Anna was killed. The trial began in September of 1912 at this court house – the former Superior Court building – before Judge Joseph F. Quinn. Ettor, Giovannitti, and a third defendant, Guiseppe Caruso, were kept in steel cages in the courtroom. The trail lasted for two months.

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