Lawrence Quotes
This was a description of the famous Lawrence, MA, textile mill strike.
There had been a major labor strike in the textile mills of Lawrence. Ettor was one of the major strike leaders and strategists. The city authorities sided totally with the mill owners and used police and militia to try and break the strike. When one of the strikers was shot and killed (historians generally agree that the police had fired the shot), the authorities used the death to incapacitate the leadership of Ettor and two other “socialist” leaders who were professional strike organizers and leaders. The 3 were arrested and charged with murder, firing the shot that killed the striker. Ettor and the others were miles away at the time giving speeches to the strikers at another mill. None-the-less, they were arrested, jailed, and not even tried until after the strike was ended. The three were quickly acquitted. The jailing of the strike leaders backfired and made the strikers even more resolute. The laborers finally won the concessions, not to have their pay cut. The defendants went on to lead other strikes.
In 1948 in the midst of the Red Scare the HUAC and its Senate counterpart had started to hound a former Assistant Secretary of State, Lawrence Duggan. Typical of the times, those who disagreed with Duggan’s political views anonymously leaked material to the press alleging that Duggan might have been a spy. The press had a feeding frenzy and Dugan committed suicide in the midst of the pressure. Most in Congress paused to contemplate the consequence of what was occurring. Even Richard M. Nixon regretted the “misunderstandings.” Dugan’s father, however, an old acquaintance of Edward R. Murrow, the then dean of American broadcasters, however primarily blamed the press for printing all the unsubstantiated rumor and innuendo.
Muste raised money for the strikers and was soon made the executive secretary of the strike committee for 25,000 strikers. A. J. placed himself at the head of the picket line and was beat to exhaustion by the police and arrested. Several weeks into the strike, the police tried to provoke violence by lining up machine guns and having a labor spy urge the strikers to overcome them.
Lawrence was a thriving community of abolitionists. Quantrill’s irregular force generally murdered prisoners, scalped them, mutilates their bodies, and wore scalps and body parts as clothing decoration. Quantrill “cleansed” Lawrence by burning virtually every building and killing the male population, See {617769}. It has been a source of great argument as to whether the Confederate command and politicians were fully aware of his actions and endorsed them or didn’t know. Since many of his escapades were printed in the Newspapers of the day, it is probably the case that the Confederate authorities had so much to do, that they just didn’t want to determine the truth of the accusations.
Describing T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia):
There had been a major labor strike in the textile mills of Lawrence. Ettor was one of the major strike leaders and strategists. The city authorities sided totally with the mill owners and used police and militia to try and break the strike. When one of the strikers was shot and killed (historians generally agree that the police had fired the shot), the authorities used the death to incapacitate the leadership of Ettor and two other “socialist” leaders who were professional strike organizers and leaders. The 3 were arrested and charged with murder, firing the shot that killed the striker. Ettor and the others were miles away at the time giving speeches to the strikers at another mill. None-the-less, they were arrested, jailed, and not even tried until after the strike was ended. The three were quickly acquitted. The jailing of the strike leaders backfired and made the strikers even more resolute. The laborers finally won the concessions, not to have their pay cut. The defendants went on to lead other strikes.
25,000 mill workers went on strike in one of the largest strikes in America at the time.
The sexism and classism in these few lines is a classic of the censorship literature.
In 1912 ten thousand textile workers went on strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The mayor and governor responded with troops wielding bayonets.
