Arturo
Giovannitti
was born in Italy in 1882. He moved to
the United States where he worked as a coal miner, book-keeper and
teacher. An active trade unionist, Giovannitti
was a member of the Industrial Workers of the
World (IWW), the leader of the Italian
Socialist Federation of North America and editor
of Il Proletario,
a radical Italian-language weekly.
In January 1912 Giovannitti went to Lawrence,
Massachusetts, to help organize the 7,000 Italian workers involved
in the textile industry strike. The American Woolen Company had reduced
the wages of its workers. This caused a walk-out and the IWW,
who had been busy recruiting workers into the union, took control
of the dispute.
Giovannitti main role in Lawrence was to help organize relief. A network
of soup kitchens and food distribution stations were set up and striking
families received from $2 to $5 cash a week. He was also a fine orator
and it was hoped he would be able to persuade the Italians from going
back to work until the union demands of a 15 per cent increase in
wages, double-time for overtime work and a 55 hour week, had been
granted.
The governor of Massachusetts ordered out the state militia and during
one demonstration, a woman striker, Anna LoPizzo was shot dead. The
union claimed that she had been killed by a police officer, but Joseph
Caruso, a striker, was charged with her murder. Giovannitti and Joseph
Ettor, who were three miles away speaking at a strike meeting,
were arrested and charged as "accessories to the murder".
On 12th March, 1912, the American Woolen Company acceded to all the
strikers' demands. By the end of the month, the rest of the other
textile companies in Lawrence also agreed to pay the higher wages.
However, Giovannitti, Ettor and Caruso were kept in prison for five
months without trial.
After demonstrations and protests the trial finally took place in
Salem, Massachusetts, on 26th November, 1912. The prisoners
appeared each day fettered together in an iron cage. However, there
was virtually no evidence against the men and they were all acquitted.
In 1916 Giovannitti, along with Joseph Ettor
and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, were expelled
from the IWW over a disagreement about the
handling of a strike of iron-ore workers in Mesabi, Minnesota.
In the 1920s and 1930s Giovannitti was considered to be one of the
greatest orators in the labour movement. He continued to campaign
for socialism until the end of the Second
World War when his health failed. Arturo
Giovannitti died in 1959.
(1)
Arturo Giovannitti, speech to jury (November, 1912)
If there was any violence
in Lawrence it was not Joe Ettor's fault. It was not my fault. If
you must go back to the origin of all the trouble, gentleman of the
jury, you will find that the origin and reason was the wage system.
It was the infamous rule of domination of one man by another man.
It was the same reason that fifty years ago impelled your great martyred
President, Abraham Lincoln, by an illegal act, to issue the Proclamation
of Emancipation - a thing which was beyond his powers as the Constitution
of the United States expressed before that time.
They say you are free in this great and wonderful country. I say that
politically you are, and my best compliments and congratulations for
it. But I say you cannot be half free and half slave, and economically
all the working class in the United States are as much slaves now
as the negroes were forty and fifty years ago.
(2)
Helen Keller, introduction to a book of
poems by Arturo
Giovannitti.
No one has ever given me a good
reason why we should obey unjust laws. When a government depends for
"law and order" upon the militia and the police, its mission
in the world is nearly finished. We believe, at least we hope, that
our capitalist government is near its end. We wish to hasten its end.
I am sure this book will go on its way thrilling to new courage those
who fight for freedom. It will move some to think and keep them glad
that they have thought.
(3)
Obituary, Arthuro Giovannitti, New York
Times (1st January, 1960)
Until the end of World War
II when his health failed, he wrote and spoke extensively in the struggle
to establish organized labour. At various times he was a close associate
of Max Eastman, Norman Thomas, David Dubinsky, and many others. At
the fiery labor rallies in the Nineteen Twenties and Thirties, Mr.
Giovannitti was in great demand as a speaker. A colorful figure, with
a Van Dyke beard, a Lord Byron collar and flowing tie, he addressed
Italian and English-speaking audiences with an equally flowery fluency.
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
