Bread and Roses a Hundred Years On

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.iww.org/en/content/bread-and-roses-hundred-years?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

Posted Wed, 01/11/2012 - 3:25pm by x359437



One hundred years ago, in the dead of a Massachusetts winter, the great 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike—commonly referred to as the “Bread and Roses” strike—began. Accounts differ as to whether a woman striker actually held a sign that read “We Want Bread and We Want Roses, Too.” No matter. It’s a wonderful phrase, as appropriate for the Lawrence strikers as for any group at any time: the notion that, in addition to the necessities for survival, people should have “a sharing of life’s glories,” as James Oppenheim put it in his poem “Bread and Roses.”

Though 100 years have passed, the Lawrence strike resonates as one of the most important in the history of the United States. Like many labor conflicts of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the strike was marked by obscene disparities in wealth and power, open collusion between the state and business owners, large scale violence against unarmed strikers, and great ingenuity and solidarity on the part of workers. In important ways, though, the strike was also unique. It was the first large-scale industrial strike, the overwhelming majority of the strikers were immigrants, most were women and children, and the strike was guided in large part by the revolutionary strategy and vision of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

Beyond its historical significance, elements of this massive textile strike may be instructive to building a radical working class movement today. It is noteworthy that the Occupy movement shares many philosophical and strategic characteristics with the Lawrence strike—direct action, the prominent role of women, the centrality of class, participatory decision-making, egalitarianism, an authentic belief in the Wobbly principle that We Are All Leaders—to name just a few. During the two months of the strike, the best parts of the revolutionary movement the IWW aspired to build were expressed. The Occupy movement carries that tradition forward, and as the attempt at a general strike in Oakland and solidarity events such as in New York for striking Teamsters indicate, many in Occupy understand that the working class is uniquely positioned to challenge corporate power. While we deepen our understanding of what that means and work to make it happen, there is much of value we can learn from what happened in Lawrence a century ago.

A town on the brink of labor unrest

The city of Lawrence was founded as a one-industry town along the Merrimack River in the 1840s by magnates looking to expand the local textile industry beyond the nearby city of Lowell. Immigrant labor was the bedrock of the city’s development. Early on, French Canadians and Irish predominated. By 1912, when Lawrence was the textile capitol of the United States, its textile workforce was made up primarily of Southern and Eastern Europeans—Poles, Italians and Lithuanians were the largest groups, and there were also significant numbers of Russians, Portuguese, and Armenians. Smaller immigrant communities from beyond Europe had also been established, with Syrians being the largest. Though very small in number, a high percentage of the city’s African-American population also labored in textile.

FULL story at link.

[salib]

1. ... by the revolutionary strategy and vision of the Industrial Workers of the World

I believe that most of us here are hoping that OWS will give birth to something as powerful and beautiful.

[Modern School]

2. OWS is Not the IWW

The IWW wanted to abolish class entirely, and do away with wages, property and bosses. They recognized that the wealth of the 1% was stolen from 99% by paying them far less than the value of their labor and that only by getting rid of these parasites would the rest of us have any social power and material security. They also recognized that the political system was rigged against them and generally refused to participate in it, acknowledging that workers' true power was in their ability to withhold their labor and gum up the profit machine.

The OWS movement seems to be okay with wages, bosses and income disparity, but just wants the wealth gap to be less, the bosses to be a little less greedy and the politicians to listen to them.