Up to the beginning of the strike [says the Federal report just quoted] there was little or no effective organization among the employees, taken as a whole. A few of the skilled crafts, composed principally of English-speaking workers, had their own separate organizations, but the 10 crafts thus organized had at the time of the strike only approximately 2,500 members. The Industrial Workers of the World had also some years before this established an organization in Lawrence. At the beginning of the strike they claimed a membership of approximately 1,000. They had at different times names on their rolls in excess of this number, but it is estimated by active members of the organization that at the beginning of January, 1912, there were not more than 300 paid-up members on the rolls of the Industrial Workers.[563]
This statement of the situation is borne out by Mr. John Golden's testimony before the House Committee on Rules. He said that when the strike broke out, "according to the official books of the Industrial Workers of the World, they had 287 members."[564]
During the period of the strike there were many violent demonstrations and numerous acts of violence on the part of deputies, police, and militiamen, as well as on the part of the strikers. Early in the strike, Joseph J. Ettor and Wm. D. Haywood, both I. W. W. officials, came to Lawrence and thereafter figured prominently in the conduct of the strike, preaching "solidarity," "passive resistance," "direct action," and "sabotage" as means to victory. The daily press reports of the strike greatly exaggerated the violence of the strikers and almost uniformly neglected to mention acts of violence on the other side. In the I. W. W. press the situation was reversed, and the lawlessness of the constituted authorities greatly overdrawn. A writer who is, at any rate, not sympathetic with the I. W. W. describes the strike activities. He says that shortly after five o'clock (a.m., January 29, 1912), when it was still dark, an attack was made upon the street-cars, during which the trolleys were pulled off the feed-wire, the windows smashed with chunks of ice, the motormen and conductors driven off, and the passengers in some cases not allowed to leave the cars, and in others, pulled from the cars and thrown into the streets.[565] And while conferences were still going on, according to the same authority, the leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World
made a determined effort, by violence and intimidation of various sorts to prevent those wishing to resume work from reaching the mills. The endless chain system of picketing was put into force, and women ... who did not work in the mills, along with "strong arm" men, were pressed into service. Women were assaulted by men, and pepper thrown in the eyes of operatives and police officers. Early in the morning powerful men followed, threatened, and seized girls on their way to the mills, twisting their wrists, snatching their luncheons, and terrorizing them generally. During the night strangers visited the homes of the workers and threatened to cut their throats if they persisted in going to work....[566]
On the other hand, there is fairly conclusive evidence that the advent of Ettor and Haywood resulted, if not in the entire elimination of violent tactics, at least in their marked reduction and shifting of emphasis to the tactics of passive resistance. According to one who was on the spot, the riots occurred
before Ettor's organization was effected, when the strikers gathered about the mills as an organized mob and mill bosses turned streams of water upon them in zero weather. After the "blood-stained anarchists" arrived on the scene, a policy of non-resistance to the aggressions of the police and the militia prevailed.[567]
Howsoever passive the strikers may have been in their attitude to the police and the militia, they were probably quite aggressive in their campaign to win recruits to the ranks of the strikers. A Lawrence mill overseer reports that the I. W. W. strike committee[568] did it in this way:
The addresses of the men working are given to a committee. They are visited after nine o'clock at night by strangers, generally Poles: "Working today?" "Yah." (The man speaking has a sharp knife and is whittling a stick.) "Work tomorrow?" "I d'no." "If you work tomorrow, I cut your throat." "No, no. I no work." "Shake." And they shake hands.[569]
There is strong evidence of at least one attempt on the part of the business and commercial interests of Lawrence to discredit the strikers. In three places in the city a total of twenty-eight sticks of dynamite were found. The strikers declared that it had been "planted." Later a business man of Lawrence, who had no connection with the strikers, was arrested and finally tried and "convicted of conspiracy to injure by the planting of dynamite." He was fined $500.00![570]
There was great friction between the I. W. W. and the locals of other labor organizations. The Socialists and I. W. W.s accused the American Federation of Labor leaders of trying to break the strike. "All the mechanical crafts," we read in a pro-I. W. W. journal, "including engineers, firemen, electrical workers, machinists and railroaders ... remained at work, scabbing on their fellows with the full sanction ... of their officials."[571] In the face of this antagonism the rank and file of the A. F. of L. membership contributed liberally to the strike fund, giving about $11,000 to the cause of the strikers. Socialist contributions are placed at $40,000 and those of the I. W. W. local unions at $16,000.[572] The Federal investigators report that "these relief funds came from all sections of the country and average $1,000 a day throughout the strike."[573]