25,000 textile workers go on strike against the American Woolen Co. of Lawrence, Mass

Historical Context Note

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Domains

Strikes and wages

Dates

Date of occurrence 1912-01

Places

United States (Location)

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

The American Woolen Company owned several wool mills in Lawrence, a textile town in Massachusetts, employing more than 40,000 people. It operated using a largely unskilled, female, immigrant workforce. In January 1912, a Massachusetts' law reducing working hours came into effect, and the mill owners responded by cutting workers' wages. The lowering of pay would be keenly felt, and mill workers who were already doing a treacherous job and living in squalid conditions for little reward, decided to down tools and walk out. The strike spread rapidly with 20,000 workers joining the strike in the following days. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a union that welcomed immigrants and women, began to picket and IWW leaders arrived in Lawrence to organise the workers. The IWW…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

211 words

Save this article