History
The 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike, which united dozens of immigrant communities under the leadership of the Industrial Workers of the World, was led to a large extent by women. The popular mythology of the strike includes signs being carried by women reading "We want bread, but we want roses, too!", though the image is probably ahistorical. A 1915 labor anthology, The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest by Upton Sinclair, is the first known source to attribute the phrase to the Lawrence strikers. A republication of Oppenheim's poem in 1912, following the strike, attributed it to "Chicago Women Trade Unionists". To circumvent an injunction against loitering in front of the mills, the strikers formed the first moving picket line in the US.
The strike was settled on March 14, 1912 on terms generally favorable to the workers. The workers won pay increases, time-and-a-quarter pay for overtime, and a promise of no discrimination against strikers.
Read more about this topic: Bread And Roses
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)
“The history is always the same the product is always different and the history interests more than the product. More, that is, more. Yes. But if the product was not different the history which is the same would not be more interesting.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)