Perversions of Fact Through Interest. A Menace to the Community-When? Conspirators' Methods in Attempting to Destroy Trade Unions. FLORY HOISTING ENGINES ST Adapted for Contractors, Pile Driving, S. FLORY MFG. CO. :: :: Bangor, Pa. STEAM & Reading Hardware Co. Vol. XIX. DEVOTED TO THE INTERESTS AND VOICING THE DEMANDS OF THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT TH THE LAWRENCE STRIKE. By SAMUEL GOMPERS. An Outburst of Unorganized Wage-Workers. HE new "fifty-four-hour law" of Massachusetts passed into effect on the first of January, 1912. It applies only to women and minors under 18 years of age in certain occupations. But with a large majority of females in their employ, and a full third of all the workers under 21 years of age, the mill owners, in complying with the law, necessarily applied it to their entire force. The week's working time was thus cut down two hours. When the law went into operation, some of the operatives tried to find out from the mill owners whether wages were to be cut with the week's time. They received no reply to their questions. On Friday, January 12, the first pay-day of the month, on opening their pay envelopes the employes of the Lawrence mills found that they had been docked for the two hours. In two of the mills-the Wood and the Washington-several hundred operatives, mostly Italians, broke out in a fury of indignation, rushing through several parts of the great building, smashing things and calling on the other workmen to go on strike. They were followed to the streets by many others, where they were soon joined by crowds of other excited strikers, most of them formed in line, and before evening about 4,000 were on strike parade. The Law of the Bayonet. Then what? Riot, arson, murder, rebellion? The sensational press cooked up a daily mess of all this for excitable readers. "As a matter of fact," writes Lewis E. Palmer (Survey), "the actual violence of the first day and throughout the following week could have been controlled by an efficient police force half the size of that in Lawrence." Four days after the |