Bread and Roses, Too

"Yeah, okay," he said, but he didn't look up. Why were they talking about reading when the train whistle was already blowing? She was going, and what would happen to him now? He watched the train chug slowly into the station.

Rosa hugged each of the Gerbatis. Then she turned to him. He thought for a moment she was going to hug him, too, but, instead, she put out her hand and, a bit shyly, took his. "Goodbye for now, Sal ... Jake," she whispered. "You behave, hear?"

He nodded, his throat a bit too full to get out words. Then, quickly, she was on the train, waving from the window.

The three of them stood there in a little huddle, Mrs. Gerbati wiping her tears away with the tail of her shawl.

So long, shoe girl. Thanks for everything. He lifted his hand and began to wave until he could no longer see the southbound train, its whistle scarcely a tiny peep piercing the March fog.

"Mrs. Gerbati," Mr. Gerbati said sternly. "How come you don't buy this boy no gloves? Look how red his hands is."

"Oh," said Mrs. Gerbati. "I do today. Now, before he go back to work."

"Don't you mind," Mr. Gerbati said. "I do already." Out of his big overcoat pocket he pulled a pair of brown leather gloves. "So, try on. See if they fit good."

The gloves were soft and lined with fleece. Jake pulled them on slowly. Would the man never cease to surprise?

"So, fit okay?"

"Perfect."

"Oh," said Mrs. Gerbati, shaking her head. "No good, Mr. Gerbati. Should buy big. He grow too fast."

"So," Mr. Gerbati said, "next year we buy him new pair."

Next year? Jake looked at Mr. Gerbati. The old man shrugged. Mrs. Gerbati was smiling across her wide face, fresh tears swimming in her dark eyes. She threw her arms around Jake and crushed him to her breast. "We need boy in our house," she said in his ear.

It was a hug to smother a small army of boys, but Jake didn't even care. He was never going to have to beg to stay. Hell's bells. He wasn't even going to have to ask. They had straightened it out, just as Mrs. Gerbati had promised. He stepped away from her to wipe his nose on the back of his sleeve, careful to avoid his beautiful new gloves.

"I guess it's time we was getting back to work, eh, Mr. Gerbati?"

The old man pulled out his watch. "Si," he said. "Longa past time. You run ahead, Salva—Mr. Jake Beale. Tell those men I'm on the way."

And Jake Beale began to run. Even though his new boots sometimes slipped on the icy cobbles, he did not stumble. How strange, how wonderful it seemed to be running, not away from petty crime or deadly fear, but toward a new life where bread was never wanting and roses grew in stone.

* * *

Historical Note

At the turn of the twentieth century, the industrial revolution in the United States was at its height. But in order to keep profits high, owners needed increased numbers of laborers who would work for low wages. The owners of the enormous textile mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts, sent agents to poverty-stricken areas of Europe to recruit whole families to come to their mills. Posters were displayed showing an immigrant man leaving a Lawrence factory carrying a bag of gold, heading toward a bank across the street. By 1912, there were workers in Lawrence from at least thirty different countries speaking forty-five languages. The earliest workers had been mostly native-born or Irish. The Irish quickly rose to positions of importance, not only in the mills but in the city itself. In 1881, John Breen, an Irish Catholic undertaker, was elected mayor. The John Breen involved in the abortive dynamite plot was his son.

Conditions in the mills were very difficult for the new immigrant workers. They usually had the lowest-paying jobs. In order for families to survive, everyone who was able had to go to work. If children were under the age of fourteen, parents often paid to have their birth certificates falsified so the children could work in the mill.

In 1911, the Massachusetts state legislature ordered mill owners to cut the working hours of women and children from fifty-six a week to fifty-four, beginning January 1, 1912. Since most men made higher wages than women, the mill owners cut everyone's hours to fifty-four, speeded up the machines, and cut pay to make up for any lost profits that might result from the shortened work week.

The Italian branch of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), led by Angelo Rocco, a twenty-five-year-old worker who went to high school at night, determined to strike if pay was cut. Rocco felt the workers, coming from so many countries and speaking so many languages, would need help if they were to organize an effective strike. He telegraphed Joseph Ettor, one of the IWW's professional organizers, and asked him to come to Lawrence. Ettor, who was Italian American, was a charismatic speaker in several languages. He arrived in the city soon after the massive walkout on January 12 and immediately established a local strike committee, which included a woman, Mrs. Annie Welzenbach, and represented a number of nationalities. Ettor also organized relief efforts for the strikers and their families, who had been living on the edge of starvation even when working full-time.

Aided by the organizing efforts of Ettor and his compatriot, the Italian poet Arturo Giovannitti, and then, after their imprisonment on false charges, by Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the strikers, especially the immigrant women, maintained an amazing solidarity throughout the two months of the strike. "The women won the strike," Haywood was quoted as saying.

Others said it was the songs that brought the strikers to victory. Little red books containing union songs were passed out. Although most of the women couldn't read English, somehow they learned to sing in a way that made the police and militia tremble. "Beware that movement," one observing journalist said, "that generates its own songs."

On September 28, 1912, Ettor, Giovannitti, and a local worker, Joseph Caruso, were put on trial for the murder of Annie Lopizzo. Crowds stood outside the courtroom, declaring that the strike would not be truly ended until these men were set free.

The trial dragged on until November 23, when Ettor, Giovannitti, and Caruso were found not guilty. On Thanksgiving Day thousands gathered to cheer them. Those cheers reverberated through the Socialist Labor Hall of Barre, Vermont, and in union halls across the country.

The city of Barre was also very much an immigrant city. The area was long known for its high-quality granite, but granite could not be profitably quarried until the advent of modern derricks and steam drills, and it could not be widely sold until 1888, when a railroad line was built to reach the hill quarries. Then, all at once, a large supply of labor was needed. Aberdeen, Scotland, was going through severe economic times, and the quarries there were shut down, so many Scottish quarriers immigrated to Barre. They were followed by Scandinavian, Spanish, English, Gree

k, Swiss, Austrian, and French Canadian workers, and, of course, the Italian sculptors who left the marble industry in northern Italy to carve Barre granite. Sadly, in the early 1900s, work in the granite sheds of Vermont, where windows were shuttered against the cold weather, caused many of them to die young of silicosis, a story told in the novel Like Lesser Gods by Mari Tomasi. Modern ventilating equipment has virtually eliminated this threat to the health of stonecutters, and the last recorded death from silicosis occurred in 1932.