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textile workers
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- 1On This Day: Lawrence Textile Strike in Full Swing▼Today in Labor History September 30, 1912: The Lawrence, Massachusetts “Bread and Roses” textile strike was in full swin
Anniversary posts mark September 30, 1912, when 12,000 textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts walked out of the mills in the 'Bread and Roses' strike, protesting the arrests of two strike leaders. Police reportedly clubbed strikers and made many arrests. The strike remains a landmark of US labor history and its slogan endures in labor movements today.
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A new essay examines the original Luddites, the early nineteenth-century English textile workers who smashed machinery in protest at automation, and asks what their story teaches about labor and technology today. It traces the lace and hosiery trades where skilled artisans lost livelihoods to mechanization, arguing the Luddites were not anti-technology but fighting for fair terms amid economic upheaval.