PUBLIC

Title
Industrial Workers Of The World -- Thief! "The Worst Thief Is He Who Steals The Playtime of
Children" -- W.D. Haywood
Work Type
Stickerette
Sticker
Date
1912
Location
United States
Description
Message from Industrial Workers Of The World (I.W.W.) (also known as the Wobblies)
which protests the exploitation of children in textile mills. Features a quote by Big Bill
Haywood, a founder of the Industrial Workers of the World and United States labor leader.
"The Lawrence strike, one of the largest in United States history, became known as "the
Bread and Roses Strike," after workers' protest signs that read, "We Want Bread, But Roses
Too!" The strike, marked by violence, quickly gained national public attention and union
support. At the time, the textile industry dominated the economy of Lawrence,
Massachusetts. In 1912, the city's population was nearly 86,000—60,000 of whom
depended directly upon the payrolls of the textile mills. The wages for workers were poor,
housing conditions overcrowded, and average life expectancy in Lawrence one of the lowest
in the United States. Work in the mills was hard and dangerous for the largely immigrant
population of workers, many of them children who started work at an early age." -- Harvard
University Open Collections Program: Women Working, 1800-1930
Repository
Courtesy of the Richard F. Brush Art Gallery.
Subject
Industrial Workers of the World; Textile Workers’ Strike, Lawrence, Mass., 1912; Haywood,
Big Bill -- quotations; strikes and lockouts; labor unions; international labor activities;
working class; textile industry; textile mill workers; child labor; girls; children; textile
machinery; logos; Massachusetts
Collection
St. Lawrence University: Street Art Graphics
ID Number
sag_us_stickerette_017_se.jpg
Source
Industrial Workers of the World; Big Bill Haywood
Language
English
References
http://www.iww.org/; http://www.britannica.com/topic/Industrial-Workers-of-the-World; ht
tp://www.britannica.com/biography/William-D-Haywood; http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/ww/la
wrencestrike.html
Acknowledgement
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Council of Independent Colleges provided funding
support for this project.
Notes
"Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), byname Wobblies, labour organization founded in
Chicago in 1905 by representatives of 43 groups. The IWW opposed the American
Federation of Labor’s acceptance of capitalism and its refusal to include unskilled workers in
craft unions. Among the founders of the IWW were William D. (“Big Bill”) Haywood of the
Western Federation of Miners (WFM), Daniel De Leon of the Socialist Labor Party, and
Eugene V. Debs of the Socialist Party. Debs withdrew his support as the group grew more
radical. Prior to the founding of the IWW, members of the WFM had called a series of strikes
in Cripple Creek, Colorado (1894), Leadville, Colorado (1896), Coeur d’Alene, Idaho (1899),
and Telluride, Colorado (1903). The Cripple Creek strike was halted by state militia in 1904,
which prompted the WFM to form the first incarnation of the IWW. Under Haywood’s
leadership, the IWW gained greater prominence as a revolutionary organization dedicated to
controlling the means of production by the workers. Its tactics often led to arrests and
sensational publicity; when IWW organizer Joe Hill was executed in 1915 on a disputed
murder charge, he became a martyr and folk hero for the labour movement. The
organization won its greatest victories in the mining and lumbering industries of the Pacific
Northwest. The IWW was the only labour organization to oppose U.S. participation in World
War I, which IWW leaders protested by attempting to limit copper production in western
states. The federal government responded by prosecuting and convicting some of those
leaders under the newly enacted Sabotage and Espionage Acts. In the postwar years, the
IWW underwent further scrutiny and prosecution by local officials responding to widespread
antiradical sentiments. By 1925 membership in the IWW had dwindled to insignificance."
Encyclopedia Britannica Public Website: http://www.britannica.com/topic/Industrial-
Workers-of-the-World
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