Strike meetings had to be translated into 25 different languages

September 4, 2023 1:26 PM

Bread and Roses Strike of 1912. In 1911, to ease (?) the harsh working conditions, the Massachusetts State Legislature cut the work week to 54 from 56 hours, effective Jan. 1, 1912. On January 11, Polish weavers at the Everett Mill (in Lawrence MA) got their first paychecks since the law took effect. Their pay had been cut by 32 cents, enough to buy three loaves of bread. As many as 25,000 walked off the job to the cry, ‘Short pay, all out!’ Most were women between the age of 14 and 18, and nearly half had been in the country for less than five years.

Interview from the Centennial commemoration. People gather annually in Lawrence. Main link is part of the Digital Public Library of America collection, in partnership with the Lawrence History Center.

posted by spamandkimchi (7 comments total)

Myself, I learned of this as an adult via the album: “Fellow Workers”.

My dad was a staunch anti-unionist - not because he was a capitalist, but because he had bad experiences with unions over he course of his working history - entitlement, people who didn’t “seem” to work as hard as they should, and the fact that he was always a new joiner, so would be bumped by people with higher seniority.

Myself - they were necessary, and did help make the world a better place, and help establish better laws - but all of those gains have been erased in the last 30-40 years and it is time to “negotiate” new terms with “the bosses” and the governments they own…
posted by rozcakj at 1:40 PM on September 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

I love the photos and documents on the DPLA website. I think that from now on I would like to sign off all my letters with:

Yours for Industrial Freedom,
posted by Kattullus at 1:58 PM on September 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

Almost exactly 100 years after this strike, I was working in another booming economy, investigating immunity in chickens. We went schmoozing for money from the CEO of one of the larger chicken processors. Over lunch, he mentioned that all the health and safety notices at their factories were translated into 12? different languages. plus ça change. Nice lunch, but no money.
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:36 PM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

More history:

The first known use of the phrase “bread for all but roses too” in a political context comes from a speech by suffragist Helen Todd in 1910–Wikipedia cites the magazine where the text of this speech was originally published, but Google books only has the index, so I can’t link to the full context. From there, the poet James Oppenheimer picked up the idea and incorporated it into a longer poem. This poem was then published in a later anthology with a blurb suggesting that the bread and roses slogan was used at the Lawrence Strike, but it’s unclear if that account is historically accurate. What is true, however, is that people started setting Oppenheim’s poem to different tunes quickly, and that Bread and Roses the song spread around both to striking women on various picket lines and to women’s colleges. This is how I came to learn the song—as an alumna of Bryn Mawr College, where Bread and Roses still gets sung several times a year to the tune written by Mimi Fariña.


The Bryn Mawr connection is also a large part of how I come to have a bread and roses tattoo, which is great for both signaling to leftists and people in organized labor that I am a fellow traveler, and for telling a good story to anyone else.
posted by ActionPopulated at 3:06 PM on September 4, 2023 [14 favorites]

I had no idea that Mimi Farina wrote the tune to "Bread and Roses"! Thank you, ActionPopulated.
posted by suelac at 5:36 PM on September 4, 2023

Rozkakj, all those reasons your dad cited are good things. My dad also did not care for unions or strikes and was profoundly anti-union but also very pro capitalism. I loved him dearly but recognise my rabid left wing self is still in some ways in reaction to him! Not doing as much work = balancing the needs of family and self against encroaching workload and the bosses refusing to hire more people, entitlement being awareness of rights that are annoying to exploiters and older/more established people getting first right is an idea of job security that has steadily vanished.

Bread and roses is the most beautiful phrase, and remains just as true now. Same for teenage girls being on the cutting edge of social change.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 7:18 PM on September 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

ActionPopulated, as a fellow women's college alumna, I'm glad to say that Bread & Roses is still sung at Mount Holyoke's graduation as well. (But I only learned about the meaning and history of this phrase in Rebecca Solnit's book "Orwell's Roses" a couple of years ago.)
posted by of strange foe at 7:46 AM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]