This review originally appeared in the January 2006 issue of Z Magazine. I'd forgotten about it until somebody today mentioned that it's the anniversary of most of the striking workers' demands being met (12 March 1912), and so today seemed like a good one to post this:
by Bruce Watson
New York, Viking,
2005, 337 pp.
Lawrence, Massachusetts was, at the beginning of the
twentieth century, what might be called one of the greatest mill towns in the
United States, but "greatest" is a difficult term, and underneath it
hide all the conditions that erupted during the frigid winter of 1912 into a
strike that affected both the labor movement and the textile industry for
decades afterward.
Bruce
Watson's compelling and deeply researched chronicle of the strike takes its
name from a poem and song that have come to be associated with Lawrence, although
there is, according to Watson, no evidence that "Bread and Roses"
ever appeared as a slogan in Lawrence until long after 1912. This fact might suggest that Watson's
position is one of a debunker, but he offers less debunking than revitalizing,
and the ultimate effect of his book is to show why the romantic notions behind
the "Bread and Roses" phrase do a disservice to the courage and
accomplishments of the strikers.
