Massachusetts

The Bread and Roses Strike Was an Epic Labor Action for Workers’ Dignity

Published

2 years ago

January 11, 2024

The Bread and Roses Strike Was an Epic Labor Action for Workers’ Dignity

“Short pay, short pay,” shouted the Polish women weavers on January 11, 1912, as they left their looms and walked out of the factory in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The state had recently passed a modest labor reform cutting the maximum number of hours women and children could toil from fifty-six to fifty-four, and employers had promptly docked their pay. The day after the walkout, thousands of mill workers in the area joined them. A week later, the Lawrence mill workers’ strike was twenty-five thousand workers strong.

This storied labor action, widely known as the “Bread and Roses” strike, succeeded despite phenomenal ruling-class unity and the workers’ extreme deprivation. It deserves to be remembered every year, for its namesake slogan (“The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too”) and for its stirring example of collective action.

Birdseye view of Lawrence mill section showing areas occupied by different nationalities in 1910. (Washington Evening Star / Wikimedia Commons)

The strike was powered by an extraordinarily diverse group of workers, including teenage girls. About half the workers were young women aged fourteen to eighteen. About two-thirds were recent immigrants, including from France, Italy, Russia, Syria, Armenia, Ireland, Belgium, and Lithuania. Meetings were translated into more than three dozen languages.

The mill workers’ conditions were horrific. Pneumonia and tuberculosis ran rampant in the damp factories, and one-third of workers died before they turned twenty-five. Child workers often perished within the first couple years of employment. Workers lived in extremely cramped conditions, often on the brink of starvation. When the pay cut hit in January 1912, many workers were unable to feed themselves or their children.

The stakes of the conflict were high for the capitalist class, too. Lawrence wool mills were vital to the national and local economy, producing one quarter of all the wool in the United States, and comprising two-thirds of the local manufacturing economy and more than two-thirds of all capital invested in Lawrence.

Massachusetts militiamen with fixed bayonets surround a parade of peaceful strikers, Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1912. (Wikimedia Commons)

No wonder, then, that the state and the ruling classes mobilized to suppress the worker pushback. Mill owners turned fire hoses on the picketers. State militias and police were summoned from neighboring towns, even Marines. “A tumult is threatened,” whimpered the mayor, in a letter pleading with a militia captain to send troops “to suppress same.” Police beat up mothers and children as families attempted to put kids on the train to send them out of the dangerous chaos. Harvard allowed students, many of whom were militia members, to pass their classes if they missed exams due to strikebreaking.

Enraged by the police brutality, women strikers fought back. Italian women, confronting a police officer on a bridge, relieved him of his club, gun, badge, and even pants, and terrorized him by dangling him over the icy water. Management and cops alike found they could not control the knife-wielding protesters. One boss called the women “full of cunning and also lots of bad temper,” whining anxiously, “it’s getting worse all the time.”

Like many legendary protests, the Bread and Roses strike has often been misremembered as a spontaneous moment of anger. Much like Rosa Parks’s refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus in 1955, the Lawrence strike was the product of extensive organizing. Socialists were crucial to that work. The Italian Socialist Federation led their own members off the shop floor and into the streets, helped organize the entire workforce, and connected the strikers to overseas socialist networks. About twenty chapters of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) — each organizing in a different language — had been active in Lawrence for about five years; they, too, provided critical organizing and solidarity.

Children of Lawrence strikers sent to live with sympathizers in New York City during the work stoppage. (Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons)

The workers also had support from collective institutions in their community, modeled on those in their home countries. For example, Franco-Belgians ran a cooperative with a bakery, grocery store, and meeting hall. The latter was often used as meeting place for worker organizing in the years leading up to the strike. Franco-Belgians also ran a soup kitchen that fed strikers and their families.

The “Bread and Roses” slogan for which the strike is most well known did not originate with the 1912 walkout. Coined earlier by suffragettes — though a similar mantra also existed in radical working-class Italian movements — it became a pithy expression of workers’ desire to have both life’s necessities and pleasures. But it was a speech to the Lawrence strikers by Rose Schneiderman, a formidable organizer and the first American woman elected to a national position in a labor union, that popularized the mantra. As Schneiderman put it,

What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist — the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too.

The strikers won big. Though a pay cut had sparked the action, they accomplished far more than simply reversing it. They came away with a 15 percent increase in wages, double pay for overtime, and a pledge of no retaliation against workers who participated in the strike. The big pay hike rippled across the regional labor market as well, boosting wages for many other workers.

Working-class leaders far beyond Lawrence recognized the significance of the mill workers’ victory. Eugene V. Debs called it “one of the most decisive and far-reaching ever won by organized workers.” The IWW’s Big Bill Haywood addressed workers on the town common at the conclusion of the strike, saying,

Single handed you are helpless but united you can win everything. You have won over the opposed power of the city, state, and national administrations, against the opposition of the combined forces of capitalism, in face of the armed forces. You have won by your solidarity and your brains and your muscle.

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Massachusetts

Two stranded dolphins rescued from Massachusetts marsh

Published

2 hours ago

December 12, 2025

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Two stranded dolphins rescued from Massachusetts marsh

It swims in the family.

A mother and calf wandered off the beaten path and got stranded in a Massachusetts marsh, forcing an emergency mammal rescue crew to save the wayward dolphin pair.

On Dec. 8, the Wareham Department of Natural Resources responded to a report of two stranded dolphins in the area of Beaverdam Creek off of the Weweantic River, a 17-mile tributary that drains into Buzzards Bay, which directly connects to the Atlantic Ocean.

When crews arrived, two common dolphins were located alive and active, but partially out of the water stranded in the marsh, according to the Wareham Department of Natural Resources.

Responding authorities alerted the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) Marine Mammal Stranding Response Team, based in Cape Cod.

IFAW team members put the dolphins on stretchers and brought them to safety, where they conducted preliminary tests on the wayward dolphins.

“Our teams were easily able to extract the animals and transport them via our custom-built rescue vehicle,” Stacey Hedman, senior director of communications for IFAW, said.

The dolphins were weighed; the smaller of the two weighed approximately 90 lbs, and the larger mammal around 150 lbs.

Upon further analysis, it was revealed that the dolphins were an adult female and a socially-dependent juvenile female, a mother and calf pair.

According to Hedman, IFAW had some concerns over the mother’s decreased responsiveness and abnormal blood work, though it was deemed the pair was healthy enough to release back into the ocean at West Dennis Beach in Dennis, Mass.

“By releasing them into an area with many other dolphins around, this would hopefully increase their chances of socialization and survival. Both animals have satellite tags that are still successfully tracking,” Hedman said.

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Massachusetts

Man seriously injured after being thrown from moving vehicle during domestic dispute

Published

14 hours ago

December 11, 2025

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Man seriously injured after being thrown from moving vehicle during domestic dispute

A 19-year-old Massachusetts man was seriously injured after he was thrown from a moving vehicle he had grabbed onto during a domestic dispute Thursday morning.

Duxbury police said they responded to a report of an injured male who might have been struck by a vehicle on Chandler Street around 5:22 a.m. and found a 19-year-old Pembroke man lying in the roadway with serious injuries.

Through interviews with witnesses, officers learned that the man had gone to his ex-girlfriend’s residence on Chandler Street to confront her current boyfriend. An altercation ensued, during which police said the 19-year-old appears to have jumped on the hood of a vehicle and was then thrown from the moving vehicle.

The incident remains under investigation, police said. At this time, they said no charges have been filed.

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Massachusetts

Massachusetts man dies from deadly lung disease linked to popular kitchen countertops

Published

1 day ago

December 11, 2025

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Massachusetts man dies from deadly lung disease linked to popular kitchen countertops

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Massachusetts health officials announced Tuesday that the state has confirmed its first case of an incurable lung disease linked to exposure to certain countertop stones.

The disease is particularly associated with quartz, which has become increasingly popular in recent years for its practicality and aesthetic, according to health officials.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) said a 40-year-old man, who has worked in the stone countertop industry for 14 years, was recently diagnosed with silicosis, a condition that can cause death.

“The confirmation of this case in Massachusetts is a tragic reminder that silicosis is not just a distant threat. It is here, and it is seriously impacting the health of workers in Massachusetts,” Emily H. Sparer-Fine, a director at DPH, said in a statement.

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Kitchen with a quartz countertop Nov. 15, 2017, in Ballston Lake, N.Y. (John Carl D’Annibale/Albany Times Union)

The unnamed patient reportedly performed activities such as cutting, grinding and polishing, which can generate crystalline silica dust. When inhaled, this dust scars lung tissue and can lead to silicosis, DPH said.

The disease is preventable but irreversible and progressive, officials said. Symptoms include a persistent cough, shortness of breath, fatigue and chest pain. Because there is often a long latency period between exposure and symptom onset, diagnoses are frequently delayed, according to DPH.

As the disease progresses, it can result in serious complications, including lung cancer, tuberculosis and even death, the department added.

Officials added that “most cases of silicosis are work-related – it is very rare for silicosis to occur outside of workplace exposure.”

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father and son install quartz countertop

A father and son set up a quartz countertop at a booth in Albany Sept. 15, 2011. (John Carl D’Annibale/Albany Times Union)

Officials said the risk exists when handling natural stones, such as granite, but is especially high when working with engineered stone, such as quartz. While natural granite typically contains less than 45% silica, engineered stone can contain more than 90%, DPH reported.

“In recent years, the disease has become more prevalent among stone fabrication workers due to the rise in popularity of countertops made from engineered stone (also known as quartz or artificial stone),” DPH reported.

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An employee applies a sealant to sheets for countertops May 14, 2014. (Craig Warga/Bloomberg)

The department noted that, while this is the first confirmed case in Massachusetts within this industry, more cases are expected due to the disease’s long latency period and the rising popularity of engineered stone.

Other states have also reported cases of silicosis. In a 2023 study, California researchers identified 52 quartz countertop workers with silicosis. Twenty of them had advanced disease and 10 died.

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Despite the disease’s potential severity, there has not been an outright ban on quartz in U.S. kitchens. By contrast, all work involving engineered stone has already been banned in Australia due to the severe risks it poses to workers. Other countries are also pushing for more regulations.

The DPH emphasizes that silicosis is “absolutely preventable” through proper workplace controls. The alert urges employers in the stone countertop fabrication industry to implement effective safety measures, such as wet cutting and proper ventilation, to minimize silica exposure and protect workers.

“Silicosis is a devastating, life-altering disease and one that is also absolutely preventable,” Public Health Commissioner Robbie Goldstein said in a statement.

Bonny Chu is a Digital Production Assistant at Fox News Digital.

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