The Lawrence strike began with a spontaneous
walkout by the workers on January 11, 1912. The first to walk out were a group of Polish
women who, upon collecting their pay, exclaimed that they had been cheated and promptly
abandoned their looms. On the next day a mob of angry Italians left their machines and ran
from mill to mill, persuading others to join them. Workers cut threads, slashed power
belts, and smashed windows to ensure that scabs--the word strikers used for
those persons who did not join the walkout--could not easily resume work in the mills.
The number of protesters grew tremendously that day, from a few hundred to nearly ten
thousand men, women, and children. The participation did not stop there, for by the end of
the strike, 23,000 workers had left their jobs in the mills.
The small, local IWW organization quickly met.
Local organizers
sensed that the workers would respond to leaders who could unite them across
ethnic, linguistic, and gender lines.. The national IWW
leaders Joe Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti arrived on Saturday night,
January 13. The two men worked all day Sunday to rile up the workers and prepare for an
organized strike. On Monday morning, Ettor fired up a crowd that stormed City Hall. The
mayor abruptly responded by calling for the local police and 250 local militiamen to
control the mob.
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