Vol. 72/No. 24      June 16, 2008

BY SAMUEL YELLEN  
Although the strikers returned to work, they regarded their victory as not yet complete. Their leaders, Ettor and Giovannitti, were still in jail awaiting trial as “accessories before the fact” to the shooting of Anna Lo Pizzo. The workers felt that, before the strike could be termed a victory, Ettor and Giovannitti would have to be freed. This feeling was manifested in the banner inscribed “Open the jail doors or we will close the mill gates,” which was exhibited when the children who had been sent to other cities were welcomed back to Lawrence… .

As soon as the strike was ended, the Lawrence workers and the I.W.W. took active steps to secure the freedom of the indicted men. An Ettor-Giovannitti Defense Committee of 12 was organized, with William D. Haywood as chairman. Legal, publicity, and financial departments were formed. The financial department collected and expended $60,000 during the course of the defense. The publicity department helped to form Ettor-Giovannitti Defense Conferences in New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and other large cities in the United States. Agitation, by means of protest parades, demonstrations, and meetings, mounted steadily. In New York a huge meeting was addressed on May 21 at Cooper Union by Morris Hillquit. At Boston there was a great demonstration, September 15, on the Common. The wave of agitation, as it swept higher each week, frightened the Lawrence and Massachusetts authorities. Charges of conspiracy to intimidate the workers in various textile mills were brought against Haywood, William Trautmann, William Yates, Ettor Giannini, Edmundo Rossoni, Guido Mazerreli, James P. Thompson, and Thomas Holliday, all of them, curiously enough, members of the Ettor-Giovannitti Defense Committee. Indictments were returned against them, and they were released on bail.

Toward the day of the opening of the trial, September 30, there began to spread among the textile workers a strong sentiment for a demonstration strike. Ettor and Giovannitti sent letters to a mass meeting at Lawrence on September 25, requesting that the idea be abandoned, since such a strike might prejudice public opinion and would certainly cost the workers much misery. Nevertheless, the workers were determined on this means of protest against what they regarded as a crying injustice, and Local 20 of the I.W.W. decided to support them. Accordingly, on September 30 about 15,000 textile workers at Lawrence quit work in a 24-hour demonstration strike. Never before had so revolutionary a strike—in fact, a political strike—occurred in the United States… .

The prosecution, in the 58 days of trial, attempted to prove that Ettor and Giovannitti had incited the strikers, and hence Caruso, to violence and murder; but both the evidence and witnesses presented were easily discredited. Much was made by District Attorney Atwill, for instance, of a declaration by two detectives from Callahan Detective Agency that in an Italian speech Giovannitti had commanded his listeners to sleep in the daytime and to prowl around at night like wild animals. The two detectives were forced to admit, however, that they had destroyed the notes of the incriminating speech; nor was their character as witnesses above suspicion. Caruso produced a complete watertight alibi: three witnesses swore that he had been at home eating supper when Anna Lo Pizzo was shot. It was soon apparent that there was no evidence on which to convict.

Since the prosecution had often assailed their political and economic principles, Ettor and Giovannitti requested and received permission to deliver closing speeches to the jury. They made no attempt to conceal, euphemize, or soften their unalterable and fundamental opposition to the existing order of society, Giovannitti indeed, declared:

Let me tell you that the first strike that breaks again in this Commonwealth or any other place in America where the work and the help and the intelligence of Joseph J. Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti will be needed and necessary, there we shall go again, regardless of any fear and of any threat. We shall return again to our humble efforts, obscure, unknown, misunderstood soldiers of this mighty army of the working class of the world, which, out of the shadows and the darkness of the past, is striving towards the destined goal, which is the emancipation of human kind, which is the establishment of love and brotherhood and justice for every man and every woman on this earth.

On Tuesday morning, November 26, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. Ettor and Giovannitti, free once more after 10 months in jail, were cheered and embraced by crowds outside the courthouse. That afternoon they addressed a mass meeting at Lawrence, at which more than 10,000 workers hailed them and celebrated the completion of the Lawrence strike victory, the accomplishment of their display of solidarity.  
 
 
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