ed several hundred into an industrial union. Yet it
does not appear that this union started the strike. It was a case of
spontaneous combustion. No sooner had it begun, however, than Joseph J.
Ettor, an I.W.W. organizer, hastened to take charge, and succeeded so
well that within a few weeks he claimed 7000 members in his union.
Ettor proved a crafty, resourceful general, quick in action, magnetic in
personality, a linguist who could command his polyglot mob. He was also
a successful press agent who exploited fully the unpalatable drinking
water provided by the companies, the inadequate sewerage, the unpaved
streets, and the practical destitution of many of the workers. The
strikers made an attempt to send children to other towns so that they
might be better cared for. After several groups had thus been taken
away, the city of Lawrence interfered, claiming that many children had
been sent without their parents' consent. On the 24th of February, when
a group of forty children and their mothers gathered at the railway
station to take a train for Philadelphia, the police after due warning
refused to let them depart. It was then that the Federal Government was
called upon to take action. The strike committee telegraphed Congress:
"Twenty-five thousand striking textile workers and citizens of Lawrence
protest against the hideous brutality with which the police handled the
women and children of Lawrence this morning. Carrying out the illegal
and original orders of the city marshal to prevent free citizens from
sending their children out of the city, striking men were knocked down,
women and mothers who were trying to protect their children from the
onslaught of the police were attacked and clubbed." So widespread was
the opinion that unnecessary brutality had taken place that petitions
for an investigation poured in upon Congress from many States and
numerous organizations.

The whole country was watching the situation. The hearings held by a
congressional committee emphasized the stupidity of the employers in
arbitrarily curtailing the wage, the inadequacy of the town government
in handling the situation, and the cupidity of the I.W.W. leaders in
taking advantage of the fears, the ignorance, the inflammability of the
workers, and in creating a "terrorism which impregnated the whole city
for days." Lawrence became a symbol. It stood for the American factory
town; for municipal indifference and social neglect, for heterogeneity