This walking tour will take you through Salem's role in the Bread and Roses Strikes of 1912

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.

This self-guided walking tour will take you through Salem’s role in the monumental Bread and Roses Strike. Also known as the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike, or the “strike for three loaves,” the strike took place in the dead of winter from January 11th to March 14th, 1912. 

Former Superior Court Building, Federal St.

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

Congressional hearings followed a violent incident at the Lawrence train station on February 24th after police and militia tried to stop another 40 children from fleeing to Philadelphia. The police tried to detain the children and arrest the parents, but in the process began clubbing the mothers and their children and violently dragging them away from the train to be taken away in trucks. Luckily the press was there to witness the violence and reported extensively on the event, attracting the attention of the nation. Many of the women arrested refused to pay the fines to the police and opted for jail time, several of them with their babies. This incident gained national attention, including that of Helen Herron Taft, the wife of then-president William Taft. She facilitated investigations by the US house and senate into the strikes. The congressional hearings that followed included interviews of children working in the mills. These interviews exposed the shocking conditions of the mills and led to further investigation into the wool company. On March 1, 1912 after lots of negative press, the American Woolen Company offered a 5% pay raise to the workers, but the workers rejected it. With lots of pressure on them, the mill owners decided to concede and give the Lawrence workers, and all the workers throughout New England, a raise of up to 20%. All the children who had been taken to supporters in surrounding areas came home on March 30th, 1912. But Ettor and Giovannitti remained here in prison for months after the strike was over. Bill Haywood threatened another general strike if the men were not released, demanding "Open the jail gates or we will close the mill gates.” The IWW raised $60,000 for Ettor and Giovannitti’s defense and held demonstrations and mass meetings. On September 30th, 15,000 Lawrence workers went on strike for the day demanding the men’s release. Swedish and French workers proposed a boycott of wooled goods from the US and a refusal to load ships going to those countries. Supporters in Italy rallied in front of the US consulate in Rome. These outpourings of support worldwide, and the threat of further protests, prompted the trial to begin soon after. Other prominent guests in this old Salem Jail included Albert DeSalvo (the Boston Strangler) in the 1960s, and Harry Houdini, who staged an escape in 1906. When it closed in 1991, the jail was one of the oldest continuously functioning jails in the US. This building is now luxury apartments and a restaurant.

This is the old Salem Jail. It was built from 1811-1813, and was the jail where Ettor and Giovannitti were held for months without bail before and during their trial. After the men were thrown in jail, William “Big Bill” Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, other leaders with the IWW, went to Lawrence to run the strikes. They came up with a plan to send hundreds of the strikers' hungry children to sympathetic families in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont to raise awareness of the situation and draw sympathy from the surrounding areas. The children were to stay in the volunteers' homes for the duration of the strikes. Haywood traveled to surrounding areas and raised money for the strikers’ efforts in Lawrence. In conjunction with the IWW, he was able to raise funds nationwide. The IWW was also able to organize relief committees, soup kitchens, food distribution stations, and volunteer doctors to provide medical care for the strikers. 

Old Salem Jail

All three defendants, Ettor, Giovannitti, and Caruso, were acquitted on November 26, 1912, marking the end of the Bread and Roses riots. In the end, about 27,000 workers were positively affected, gaining a 5-25% wage increase, overtime pay, and a modification of the “premium system.”	The phrase "bread and roses" preceded the strike, appearing in a poem by James Oppenheim published in 1911. It reads,			"As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,			For they are women's children, and we mother them again.			Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;			Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!" The total casualties in the Bread and Roses strikes were 3 deaths (Anna LoPizzo, John Ramey, and Jonas Smolskas), countless injuries, and 296 arrests. Soon after the riots were deemed a success and the workers were given their raises, the IWW left Lawrence and moved on to assist other strikes, taking the pressure off the mills. In the next few years, the strikers lost nearly all the gains they had won. However, the strikes were not a failure: they established that workers could organize and stand up for themselves, and set a precedent for workers in the future. The Bread and Roses strike leaves a heritage as being one of the most successful strikes in American history. By its example, others were inspired to change their situations by standing up for their rights and what they believed. The strike’s legacy is the knowledge that it is possible for workers to improve their working and living conditions and for their efforts to have a far-reaching effect, benefitting American labor in general. Today, the Bread and Roses Heritage Festival is still celebrated in Lawrence each Labor Day.

While the trials of Ettor, Giovannitti, and Caruso took place, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn brought the demonstrations here to Salem. Known as “the strike’s leading lady,” she wanted to make the presence of the people known, and make it clear how many people were in support of the men on trial. She gave speeches right here on the Common. She is quoted as saying that in her speeches, she “pleaded that [Salem’s] shameful history should not be repeated,” referring to the hangings that took place during the Salem Witch Trials (Flynn, 1973, pp. 149). 

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn in a pose suggesting she is ready to give a speech. 

Entries on This Tour

Bread and Roses Strikes of 1912

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