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.

Source link

Massachusetts

Snow returning to parts of Massachusetts Wednesday. Maps show what to expect in Boston area.

Published

5 hours ago

February 16, 2026

Press Room

Snow returning to parts of Massachusetts Wednesday. Maps show what to expect in Boston area.

If you thought winter was over in Massachusetts, the weather forecast for the Boston area this week is a reminder that the snow is still very much here.

We are currently tracking several chances for snow and a wintry mix over the next seven days as a very active and stormy pattern is emerging.

Three chances for snow in Massachusetts

There will be three chances for wintry precipitation in the next five days, each of which will have a higher potential impact then the last.

On Tuesday, there will be a very minor event with some scattered snow flurries and showers passing through in the morning. We do not believe this will have much, if any, impact on the Tuesday morning commute. Some widely scattered coatings are possible.

The stakes are raised a bit more for an event Wednesday so, the WBZ-TV Weather team has issued a NEXT Weather Alert for Wednesday midday through Wednesday night.

Wednesday snow forecast

This is not a typical storm by any means. It will be more of a “strip” or “channel” of rain and snow that will extent hundreds of miles outward form the parent low pressure system in the upper Midwest. The trick to correctly forecasting this event will be to nail the location of the 100 mile wide strip of precipitation.

WBZ-TV graphic

CBS Boston

The precipitation will arrive in the late morning or midday on Wednesday with the northern half being snow and the southern half rain.

Currently, the odds favor areas north of the Massachusetts Turnpike for accumulating snow with mainly rain or a rain/snow mix south of the Pike.

The entire event lasts for about 12 hours, tapering off by midnight.

Who gets the most snow Wednesday?

Chances for plowable snow are highest along and north of the Mass Pike.

Again, there will be a strip of snow between 50-to-100 miles wide (north to south) where most of the accumulation occurs.

Friday snow highest potential

Friday brings yet another storm threat, this one with the highest potential of the week.

WBZ-TV graphic

CBS Boston
Advertisement

While it is a bit too early for specifics, this one could be more of a “natural” New England coastal storm with impacts potentially including:

Widespread, plowable snow
Strong winds
Coastal concerns

We will have more on this in the next few days.

Also, some weather forecasting models are bringing yet another storm into our area Sunday and Monday. If all of these were to occur, this would be our busiest stretch of the entire winter.

The WBZ Weather Team will keep you updated every step of the way on WBZ-TV, CBS News Boston and WBZ.com

In:

Source link

Massachusetts

Massachusetts man facing multiple charges in Vermont

Published

17 hours ago

February 16, 2026

Press Room

Massachusetts man facing multiple charges in Vermont

SHAFTSBURY, Vt. (WRGB — A North Adams, Mass. man faces multiple charges, accused of stealing a credit card from a vehicle in Shaftsbury and using it for unauthorized purchases.

On October 14, 2025, at approximately 1:30 am, Vermont State Police was notified of a car break-in on Sycamore Lane in the Town of Shaftsbury. It was later discovered that multiple motor vehicles had been broken into, with a credit card belonging to Gail Hostetter, 40, being stolen directly from her motor vehicle.

MORE: Woman arrested for stealing car, cash in town of Ballston

It was reported that purchases were made using Hostetter’s credit card that were not authorized. Over months of thorough investigation with the review of video surveillance, eye-witness testimony, and digital forensics, it was discovered that Elijah Foucher, 22, was linked to using the credit card for several high value purchases.

MORE: Waterford man accused of stealing thousands of dollars from Saratoga County

On February 15, 2026, Foucher was brought into the Bennington Police Department for an interview, during which he was issued a citation to appear in the Vermont Superior Court – Bennington Criminal Division on April 13th, to answer charges including Grand Larceny, Identity Theft, Illegal Possession of a Credit Card, and False Pretenses.

Foucher was then processed at the Bennington Police Department and was released shortly thereafter.

Source link

Massachusetts

Immigration, fertility drops show Massachusetts losing people

Published

1 day ago

February 15, 2026

Press Room

Immigration, fertility drops show Massachusetts losing people

BOSTON — On the heels of federal estimates that reflect slowing population growth in Massachusetts, an expert on the topic cited dropping international immigration levels and long-term fertility trends as she told lawmakers that the drain could get even worse.

Immigration accounts for the biggest change in the state and nation’s population growth rate, Susan Strate, senior program manager for the UMass Donahue Institute’s Population Estimates Program, said Tuesday.

U.S. Census estimates released in January suggest Massachusetts’ population increased by about 0.2% between July 1, 2024 to July 1, 2025, to 7,154,084. The figure represents a slowdown in population growth compared to the previous year-over-year period, when Massachusetts saw its largest population increase in 60 years, almost 1%, between 2023 and 2024. It was fueled largely by high immigration levels.

Estimated net international immigration rates fell in Massachusetts in July 2025 to 40,240, compared to July 2024 at 77,957, Strate said. The Census Bureau named “a historic decline in net international migration” as the cause of slower overall U.S. population growth, showing a year-over-year increase of .5%.

Population growth is critical for any state but in Massachusetts in particular immigrants have played a major role across sectors over the years, helping to boost an economy where high living costs can deter new arrivals and cause longtime residents to look out of state for more affordable lifestyles.

The recent estimate captured six months during the Biden administration, and six months under the administration of President Donald Trump, Sen. Will Brownsberger, D-Boston, noted while chairing a Senate Committee on the Census hearing. He asked Strate whether the majority of those 40,000 immigrants came to Massachusetts during the first half of that timeframe.

“I’d hesitate to put numbers on it,” Strate said. “I’m not an expert on federal policy, but as you know — mass deportations, and also this kind of, death by a thousand paper cuts, where a lot of the administrative processes for people are getting much harder, much more difficult to navigate, a lot more barriers being put up.”

“Absolutely, we would expect that number to continue to drop,” Strate added, referring to the state’s net international immigration figure.

The Trump administration has accelerated deportations and taken actions that will “secure” U.S. borders and “end illegal immigration,” according to the Department of Homeland Security. The administration has escalated federal immigration enforcement tactics since the recent estimates’ cutoff in July 2025, and there are no signs that the approach will change in the nearly three years remaining on the president’s term.

Net immigration into Massachusetts has historically offset domestic outmigration. That held true in July 2025 estimates, which show that year-over-year immigration estimates still outweighed the estimated 33,340 people who left the state for other parts of the U.S., according to the Donahue Institute.

“Absent immigration, Massachusetts would already be losing population,” the Boston-based Pioneer Institute’s Economic Research Associate Aidan Enright said in a policy brief responding to the Census estimates. “Domestic out-migration rose again in 2025, and that’s a clear signal that the state is becoming less competitive as a place to live, work, and do business.”

Pioneer is among several groups that continue to warn about outmigration and are backing two tax-related ballot measures that could go before voters in November. Pioneer on Thursday released a report suggesting that domestic outmigration is “hollowing out” the state’s workforce and economy. The report also suggested Massachusetts lost an estimated 182,000 residents to net domestic outmigration from 2020 through 2025.

“We have sustained population growth entirely based on international migration,” Brownsberger told the News Service. “Over the past 12 months, international immigration has slowed to a trickle as a result of federal policy changes. That means that our projections of future population growth and future household formation need to be reviewed. All of our existing projections are based on immigration rates which are no longer to be expected.”

“It’s also hard to imagine the immigration trends will suddenly reverse, even if we have different policies coming from Washington,” the Boston Democrat added.

In longer-term projections, Strate tied fertility rates into the mix. The median age of millennials was about 34 years old in 2025, Strate said, and the peak fertility cohort is aged 30 to 34 years old in Massachusetts.

“For the next 10 years, the folks who are aged 20-to-24 now will be aged 30-to-34, so they will be passing through that higher fertility period. But then kind of looking forward 20 years, to 2045, there’s no next wave of large population coming behind them,” Strate said.

Population projections begin to start falling after 2035, she said, in part because the population aging into that fertile group is smaller. The combination of baby boomers aging, and millennials passing through fertile range is a “perfect storm” for increased death and declining birth rates, Strate added.

Declining immigration will reduce births even further in Massachusetts, she said, referring to 2024 American Community Survey data measuring births by year and mother’s nativity.

“I think it’s quite striking that by 2024, about 38% of all of the births in Massachusetts are to mothers who were born outside of the U.S. So you can kind of imagine if immigration continues to fall off, that births will also be undercut to the tune of 38% or more going forward,” Strate said.

Concerns about reaching immigrant communities for the Census have already been reflected upon by Brownsberger, and Secretary of State William F. Galvin recently cited concerns about “efforts now underway to limit the process and procedures for the count” in a reelection message.

While those count concerns and immigration projections are different issues, they’re linked in that they’re both a consequence of federal policy, Brownsberger said. It will be harder to count immigration populations, and those populations will be smaller, he said.

“The challenge in the 2030 census count is to include marginalized populations, especially immigrant populations,” Brownsberger said. “That’s always a challenge, but the events of the last 12 months have enormously reduced trust in immigrant communities and they’re less likely to stand up to be counted in the 2030 Census.”

Ella Adams is a reporter for the State House News Service and State Affairs Massachusetts. Reach her at ella.adams@statehousenews.com.

Source link