This month in labour history

On Jan. 11, 1912, the famous “bread and roses” textile strike by immigrant workers began in Lawrence, Massachusetts, led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Prompted by a two-hour pay cut corresponding to a new law shortening the workweek, the strike involved over 20,000 workers from nearly every mill in Lawrence.

The slogan "Bread and Roses" originated in a speech given by Rose Schneiderman; a line in that speech "The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too." inspired the title of the poem.

After its first publication in 1911, the poem was published again in July 1912 in The Survey (magazine) with the same attribution as in December 1911, and again on October 4, 1912 in The Public, a weekly then published by Louis F. Post in Chicago, this time with the slogan being attributed to "Chicago Women Trade Unionists". The first publication in book form was in the 1915 labor anthology, The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest by Upton Sinclair, this time with a new attribution and rephrased slogan: "In a parade of strikers of Lawrence, Mass, some young girls carried a banner inscribed, 'We want Bread, and Roses too!'".