The 1912 strike in the textile city of Lawrence, Massachusetts, was the IWW’s most famous victory. When a new state law shortened the workweek and the mill owners responded by cutting pay, some 20,000 workers — mostly immigrant women and children speaking dozens of languages — walked out in the January cold. IWW organizers including Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Joseph Ettor, and Arturo Giovannitti helped weld this diverse workforce into a disciplined movement.
The strikers’ tactic of sending their hungry children to sympathetic families in other cities drew national outrage when police clubbed women and children at the Lawrence train station. After more than two months, the mills conceded wage increases, overtime pay, and amnesty for the strikers. Remembered through the slogan "Bread and Roses" — dignity as well as wages — Lawrence stands as one of the great triumphs of American labor.