William Dudley Haywood, nicknamed "Big Bill", was an American labor organizer and founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and a member of the executive committee of the Socialist Party of America. During the first two decades of the 20th century, Haywood was involved in several important labor battles, including the Colorado Labor Wars, the Lawrence Textile Strike, and other textile strikes in Massachusetts and New Jersey.
The United States textile workers' strike of 1934, colloquially known later as The Uprising of '34 was the largest textile strike in the labor history of the United States, involving 400,000 textile workers from New England, the Mid-Atlantic states and the U.S. Southern states, lasting twenty-two days.
The Lawrence Textile Strike, also known as the Bread and Roses Strike, was a strike of immigrant workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912 led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Prompted by a two-hour pay cut corresponding to a new law shortening the workweek for women, the strike spread rapidly through the town, growing to more than twenty thousand workers and involving nearly every mill in Lawrence. On January 1, 1912, the Massachusetts government enforced a law that cut mill workers' hours in a single work week from 56 hours, to 54 hours. Ten days later, they found out that pay had been reduced along with the cut in hours.
The following is a timeline of labor history, organizing & conflicts, from the early 1600s to present.
Anna LoPizzo was an Italian immigrant striker killed during the Lawrence Textile Strike, considered one of the most significant struggles in U.S. labor history.
The Pietro and Maria Botto House, also known as Pietro Botto House, at 83 Norwood Street, Haledon in Passaic County, New Jersey, United States, is where leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union spoke to the 25,000 striking workers of the Paterson Silk Strike of 1913.
The 1835 Paterson textile strike took place in Paterson, New Jersey, involved more than 2,000 workers from 20 textile mills across the city. The strikers, many of whom were children and of Irish descent, were seeking a reduction in daily working hours from thirteen and a half hours to eleven hours. Support from other workers in Paterson and nearby cities allowed the strikers to sustain their efforts for two weeks. Employers refused to negotiate with the workers, and were able to break the strike by unilaterally declaring a reduction in work hours to twelve hours daily during the week and nine hours on Saturdays. Many leaders of the strike and their family were blacklisted by employers in Paterson after it ended. Due to the lack of long distance communication and the lack of birth certificates, many people who were blacklisted ran off using a new identity, the most famous person to do this is the infamous Anthony Gunk.
The 1926 Passaic textile strike was a work stoppage by over 15,000 woolen mill workers in and around Passaic, New Jersey, over wage issues in several factories in the vicinity. Conducted in its initial phase by a "United Front Committee" organized by the Trade Union Educational League of the Workers (Communist) Party, the strike began on January 25, 1926, and officially ended only on March 1, 1927, when the final mill being picketed signed a contract with the striking workers. It was the first Communist-led work stoppage in the United States. The event was memorialized by a seven reel silent movie intended to generate sympathy and funds for the striking workers.
Arthur Patrick L. "Pat" Quinlan (1883–1948) was an Irish trade union organizer, journalist, and socialist political activist. Quinlan is best remembered for the part he played as an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World in the 1913 Paterson silk strike — an event which led to his imprisonment for two years in the New Jersey State Penitentiary.
The United Textile Workers of America (UTW) was a North American trade union established in 1901.
The Lawrence Textile Strikes were part of a series industrial strikes in the garment and textile industries of the American East from 1909 to 1913. The participants of these strikes were largely immigrant factory workers from southern and eastern Europe. Class division, race, gender, and manufacturing expertise all caused internal dissension among the striking parties and this led many reformist intellectuals in the Northeast to question their effectiveness. A major turning point for these labor movements occurred in 1912 during the Lawrence Textile Strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where laborers were able to successfully pressure mill owners to raise wages, later galvanizing support from left-leaning intellectual groups. In 1913 the Paterson Silk Strike also referred to as the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1913 took place in Paterson, New Jersey. This strike was a work stoppage involving silk mill worker.
The 1907 Skowhegan textile strike was a labor dispute between approximately 225 mill workers and the owners of the Marston Worsted Mill in Skowhegan, Maine, United States. Declared following the firing of 17 year-old French Canadian-American girl named Mamie Bilodeau, the strike was the first successful strike involving the recently formed Industrial Workers of the World.
John Golden was an American textile worker and trade union leader. He was elected president of the United Textile Workers of America (UTW) each year from 1902 until shortly before his death in 1921. At the time of his death, he was declared as important to textile unionism as John Mitchell was to mining unionism.
The Paterson pageant was a dramatic depiction of the 1913 Paterson silk strike acted by the strikers themselves in New York City's Madison Square Garden while the strike was ongoing. Staged by John Reed and other bohemians of Greenwich Village, the pageant played before a full audience and received positive reviews, though its public support and sympathy did not translate into success for the six-month strike, which crumbled following the pageant. One of the Wobbly leaders behind the strike, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, credited the pageant with hastening strike's end, having split the strikers' attention from their primary cause.
The 1914–1915 Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills strike was a labor strike involving several hundred textile workers from the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The strike, which involved about 500 millworkers, began on May 20, 1914, and ended almost a year later on May 15, 1915, in failure for the strikers.
The 1913 Studebaker strike was a labor strike involving workers for the American car manufacturer Studebaker in Detroit. The six-day June 1913 strike, organized by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), is considered the first major labor strike in the automotive industry.
The 1912–1913 Little Falls textile strike was a labor strike involving workers at two textile mills in Little Falls, New York, United States. The strike began on October 9, 1912, as a spontaneous walkout of primarily immigrant mill workers at the Phoenix Knitting Mill following a reduction in pay, followed the next week by workers at the Gilbert Knitting Mill for the same reason. The strike, which grew to several hundred participants under the leadership of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), lasted until January the following year, when the mills and the strikers came to an agreement that brought the workers back to the mills on January 6.
The 1913 Ipswich Mills strike was a labor strike involving textile workers in Ipswich, Massachusetts, United States. The strike began on April 22 and ended in defeat for the strikers by the end of July.
The New England Textile Strike was a strike led by members of the United Textile Workers of America (UTW) principally in the U.S. states of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Throughout the duration of the strike, an estimated 68,000-85,000 workers refused to work. Alongside the UTW, the IWW and ATW played major organizing roles within it, with the strike lasting for around 200 days at most mills.
A strike of silk dyers in Paterson, New Jersey, from April to June 1902, spilled over into the wider New Jersey textile industry.
